


A Pair of Blue Eyes

by WatMcGregor



Series: The Zillebeke Series [1]
Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:15:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28385364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatMcGregor/pseuds/WatMcGregor
Summary: AU First World War fiction, first of a multi-chapter two-parter with Zillebeke (which I'll re-post soon). Now re-posted in one big chunk because formatting :(Originally posted in June 2020, and I see that I completed it in two weeks - what WAS I thinking!?
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Series: The Zillebeke Series [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2079237
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	A Pair of Blue Eyes

Chapter 1

10th August, 1917 (Ypres)

The rough track crunches underfoot with every step, and there have been thousands of them already.

Steps. Strides.

Purposeful, at first, when they were just setting out, full of vigour and proud to be defending King and country. Certain that if they could just knock a bit of sense into the Hun, they’d be home in no time. The start of this particular journey had been two days ago, however, and now they perform the bare minimum to set one foot in front of the other, enthusiasm dulled by the sheer monotony.

Ahead, columns and columns of men, all marching in formation, silent for the most part, the sound of hundreds and hundreds of pairs of boots setting a rhythm for all to fall into. Officers on horseback patrol the lines, keeping the men orderly and calling words of encouragement, or chastisement when a man steps out of line.

Private Ben Mitchell tips his helmet back and wipes sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. It’s a hot summer’s day, and on any other occasion he would be revelling in the sight of the verdant fields around them, the sound of the occasional birdsong, although even the birds are lethargic on a day as hot as this. Just below the horizon he can see a field being ploughed, little by little turning from green to brown in pleasingly straight lines as the horse and plough traverse back and forth. Coming from London, it’s not often he gets to see a pastoral sight such as this, and it swells his heart despite their destination; despite the blister that’s forming on his left heel.

“’S a glorious day for it, boys,” he says.

A few of the men around him nod their heads or mutter agreement. Only one, the fellow-cockney beside him, snorts. “Glorious day for meetin’ yer maker, ya mean?”

“Oi! We’ll have none of that talk, Private Brown,” says Ben. He looks up at the cloudless blue sky, and thanks God he’s alive, at least for today, then tips his helmet squarely back onto his head and concentrates on the neck of the tall, shy private marching in front of him, red and glistening with sweat beneath the closely shorn hairline. “Private Highway,” calls Ben. “How is it up there? You seen our destination yet?”

Over the last two days, Private Highway has become accustomed to his teasing and has submitted with good grace. The answer, thrown back without a second’s thought, delights his tormentor. “No, but there is a bit of snow this high up.”

“You, Private Mitchell, are a menace,” comments Brown, beside him. “Do we even know where we’re heading for?”

“Some strangely-named place,” replies Ben. “Lord knows how to begin to pronounce it.” He spells it out, counting off the letters on his fingers. “Y.P.R.E.S.”

“Wipers?” suggests Private Brown.

“Wipers,” agrees Ben. Even if that isn’t the correct pronunciation it will suffice.

It’s past noon and the sun is high in the sky when they stop for rations of bully beef and biscuits soaked in tea to soften them.

“God bless Huntley and Palmers,” says Private Brown, holding up the biscuit he’d almost broken a tooth on before dipping it into his tea.

“Jellied eels!” exclaims Ben from where he’s sprawled on the grass at Private Brown’s feet, sucking on a rolled-up cigarette. “That’s what I miss the most! Jellied eels, with a lovely drop of vinegar.”

“Me mum’s jam roly-poly,” supplies Private Highway. “She makes the best roly-poly in the whole of East London.”

“You’ve a sweet tooth?” asks Ben, wriggling round to look up at him and squinting against the strong sunlight.

Private Highway nods down at him from his vantage point on a tree stump, his face silhouetted against the sun. “What I wouldn’t give for a sugared almond now. Or a candied orange.”

“We always used to have candied oranges at Christmas,” says Ben wistfully, turning onto his back. He stares into the sky, his eyes shaded by his hand, and then rouses himself with a quick grin. “And we shall do again. Just the small matter of some fisticuffs beforehand, then we’ll all be going home to our dear old mums.”

They stop for the night as the shadows are beginning to lengthen and the birds rediscover their song. Their battalion is billeted at a deserted farm, in the barns, to be specific. They fall out and are given leave to fill the time before dinner with anything they choose. Someone discovers a lake behind the largest barn, and a number of the men take the opportunity to bathe, casting off their rough, heavy uniforms and swimming naked, or scrubbing themselves clean with the hard soap in their kitbags that barely works up a lather. Others occupy themselves with writing letters home, or reading. One man brings out a harmonica and plays popular dancehall numbers on request. In the distance, there is the occasional thump of artillery, mistaken at first for approaching thunder. They must be getting close to the frontline.

“You know what this means?” asks Brown, as he and Ben sit watching the men frolicking in the lake.

“What what means?”

“All this freedom to do as we please tonight. We’re close.” Brown nods at him. “We’ll be going over the top soon.”

Ben knows it’s ridiculous, but sitting in the evening sun with his muscles still twitching from their march and his head free of anything but the rhythmic crunch of boots on gravel, still resounding even after they’ve stopped, he can’t imagine that anything could ever ruin this idyll. “Surely not,” he says, feeling a frisson of fear run down his spine. “Not yet.”

“I’m tellin’ ya,” insists Brown. “If they give us rum with our dinner tonight, you can thank me for being right.”

“I’m not sure I’d thank ya,” grunts Ben, wrestling to get his boots off. “But if I’m about to meet me maker, I’m going to make sure I’m clean and presentable.”

And with that, he sheds his clothes and takes a running dive into the lake, passing Private Highway as he makes his way back out.

Dinner that evening is stew with more of the biscuits to soak into the gravy. And a tot of rum for each man. Ben exchanges a glance with Private Brown as he takes his serving. He tilts it in a grim toast.

He wakes early the next morning, and wonders if his brain is ensuring he sees as many minutes of the new day as he possibly can. He chastises himself for being fanciful, and raises his head. All around him men are still snoring, their brains less concerned than his to wring every last drop out of the lives they might have left to them. The blanket the other side of Private Brown is cast aside, its owner nowhere to be seen. Ben sits up and rubs the sleep out of his eyes, and then gets up and quietly picks his way between the sleeping bodies and out of the barn to relieve himself against its outer wall.

It’s another glorious morning. The sun is bearably warm, only now rising above the crest of the hill beyond the farm, and all is still. He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, then strolls round the back of the barn to the lake, thinking to take a short walk before the men are herded back into their columns for the final march up to what he is sure now is going to be the frontline. A figure is sitting on the bank of the lake. As Ben squints against the light he sees that it’s Private Highway.

“Company?” asks Ben as he draws level. The other man glances up at him, looking as if he’s just been shocked out of a stupor. He shrugs, and Ben sits beside him, watching as a moorhen fusses out on the water, bobbing its head and preening its feathers.

“They say we’re close,” says Private Highway eventually, his voice subdued, as if he has no wish to break the tranquillity of the morning.

“They do,” agrees Ben. “Hard to imagine, ain’t it, sitting here now, with all this?” He gestures around himself with a flourish, and from the corner of his eye sees Private Highway nod briefly.

They sit in silence for a few minutes, and then Private Highway fidgets. “I’m scared!” He looks round at Ben to gauge his reaction. “I know I shouldn’t say it, but there you are.”

His eyes are wide, and Ben thinks back to the previous afternoon, when he was singing the praises of his mother’s jam roly-poly with such fondness. He wonders if he’ll ever experience it again.  
He’s a fine-looking man, with a strong, graceful body and an honest, open face, perhaps a little older than Ben. He’d have made a good father, if he’d had the opportunity, Ben’s sure of it. He shakes his head to rid it of the odd and unexpected thought. “Shall I let ya into a secret?” he asks.

Private Highway nods, looking intrigued.

“There’s not a man amongst this company that ain’t scared, me included.” “D’you think it’ll be quick? Will we know much about it?”  
He looks so hopeful, Ben doesn’t have the heart to tell him the truth, that it might be quick, but it will more than likely be painful and terrifying, and long and drawn-out, from what he’s seen of other casualties, other battles. “Have you not seen action before?” he asks.

The other man shakes his head. “I only came over three months ago. They took forever to call me up. I was workin’ in a funeral business, so I s’pose they thought I was needed back there. I’ve spent most of me time since I got to Belgium marchin’ to battles and then being marched back again before we saw any fightin’.” He frowns, as if life is confusing to him. “I s’pose me luck’s about to

run out.”

“I tell ya what,” says Ben, ignoring the fear that’s prickling along his own spine. “You say you come from East London? Which part?”

“Stratford.”

“Alright then, Private Highway, when this is all over, I shall seek you out in Stratford and take you for a pint. How’s that grab ya?”

The other man smiles, the skin around his blue eyes crinkling. “I’d like that.” He holds out a hand “Callum.”

Ben shakes it, just the once. “Ben.”

As they march forward again that morning, they know they’re getting closer to the frontline because of what they see. The land around them turns grey and muddy, despite the bright sunshine. Trees that only a couple of weeks ago were in the middle of the battle zone are uprooted or split in half by artillery fire, their silhouettes stark against the skyline. The men pass troops returning from battle further up-country, walking wounded following behind ambulance wagons full of those less fortunate, and what’s worse even than their injuries is the haunted look in their eyes as they pass by without a word or a glance. Some of the men in the wagons are wailing, screaming in pain.

The men in the battalion grow quieter the closer they get to their destination. The artillery fire is ever-present now, rumbling all around them and falling silent every now and again for no more than a few seconds at a time, only to sound even louder when it starts up again. Ahead of him, Ben sees Private Highway’s – Callum’s – head go down, and he calls to him. “Private Highway, remember that pint. Not long now.”

He sees him give a brief, curt nod.

They bed in for the night in a series of trenches running east to west, finding spaces to sleep in the mud and the stench. Despite the hot weather, the trenches have been turned into a quagmire from the passage of so many men going backwards and forwards. Another tot of rum is served with dinner, and this time they know for certain. First light tomorrow will be when they go over the top.

The mood is sombre. They’re far enough back from the front that they can still chatter and make music without alerting the enemy, but no one seems inclined to do so. The men smoke quietly, or play unenthusiastic card games; some write letters, others stare into space, reliving treasured memories, no doubt. The chaplain passes among them, stopping to whisper words of comfort to any man who seems to want it. Ben smokes a cigarette and avoids his eyes as he passes him.

As night falls, the dusk is lit up every now and again by shells going high up into the air. Ben tries to estimate how far away they are from the frontline by counting out the seconds between the shells exploding and the boom reaching them, as if he’s trying to estimate how far away a thunder storm might be. He’s no idea if it works the same way for artillery, but he guesses they’re less than two miles out. A short march tomorrow.

He looks around in the fading light, trying to decide what he wants his abiding memory to be, his last sight before he closes his eyes for the night, possibly for the second-last time ever in his life. There’s no poetry to be had in this godforsaken place; nothing of beauty he could possibly want to

remember. Instead, he calls into his mind’s eye the image of skin crinkling in a smile around vivid blue eyes. He’s momentarily uneasy, but then reflects that he’s going to hell anyway, on earth if not in the afterlife, so perhaps it makes no odds.

He’d thought he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but he’s shaken awake in a pale dawn and reaches for his mess tin, still half-asleep, as men from the catering corps pass down the trench dishing out food. Ben can’t help but think of it as the condemned man’s last meal. For such a momentous event he’d hoped it might have been a little more flavoursome.

He squeezes his eyes together in greeting at Callum, who’s sitting across the trench from him and looking like he’s going to be sick. “I can’t eat this,” says Callum, setting his mess tin to one side.

“You should eat summat,” says Ben through a mouthful of cold stew. “Keep yer strength up.”

“For what?” demands Callum. He stares Ben out for a few seconds, and then his face crumples and he puts his head in his hands.

Ben wishes he could tell him it’s going to be perfectly alright, but he’s as scared as the other man. He spits out a lump of gristle and then leans forward and lays a hand on his arm. “Eat, Callum. Just a bite or two.”

Just then the enemy fire starts up again, a barrage of shells shooting up into the air and shaking the earth as they land. Perhaps the battalion is closer to the frontline than Ben had estimated.

“Bleedin’ ‘ell they’re startin’ early!” exclaims Brown. “Got a head start on us, at any rate.” “P’raps they didn’t have any gourmet casserole to munch their way through first,” suggests Ben.

After they’ve eaten it’s less than an hour’s march through the maze of trenches towards the sound of the gunfire. They proceed silently, like the walk of the dead, grim-faced and eyes set on the heels of the man in front.

Finally and yet all too soon, the officers call a halt and order them to stand an arm’s length from each other. The trenches they find themselves in now are narrower than those they’d slept in, with ladders dug into the earth on one side. They are given their orders, and then the officers stand back, drawing their guns as they do so. Private Brown frowns at Ben, wondering why they need their weapons so soon when they’ll be the last to go over the top. Ben refrains from telling him. At this stage in proceedings, the guns are not for the enemy. They’re for any cowards who refuse to go over.

He darts a grim look at Callum. The older man is shaking, his eyes wide. He fiddles clumsily with his bayonet.

“Follow my lead,” whispers Ben. He’s not sure why he’s taken it upon himself to look after the man. He supposes it stops him from thinking about his own fear. Callum nods silently.

They wait as a massive artillery barrage erupts from behind their own lines. As the noise subsides, the cry goes up from the officers. Men! Forward!

Private Brown is first up the ladder nearest to them, his foot slipping off the third rung up before he rights himself and completes the climb. Ben waves Callum up next and scrambles up close

behind, his blood pounding in his ears and his legs shaking.

Above, all is chaos. Smoke from the artillery fire is obscuring much of his vision and he chokes on the acrid air, but he makes out broken lines of barbed wire not fifty feet away and shadowy figures in his periphery. The ground beneath his feet is pitted and uneven, he stumbles several times, splashing through water and mud. He raises his bayonet but can’t fire it for fear of hitting his own comrades who are fanning out in front of him. He sees Callum drop back level with him, and shouts encouragement he’s sure the other man doesn’t hear. Mortars begin whistling across at them from the other side. Two men in front of him drop to the ground. He hears gunfire and men screaming. For a split second every sound is muffled.

And then everything goes black.

Chapter 2

12th August 1917 (Ypres)

Water. Dripping on his hand.

Inches from his face he sees his fingers twitch in response. Light flashes in the sky and he cowers, certain more mortars are flying overhead. There is mud in his mouth, it’s in his nostrils too. He feels more water on his skin; he feels it tapping on his khakis, sees it staining them a darker colour where it drops.

He rolls over onto his back with an effort, spitting mud from his mouth, putting a finger either side of his nostrils as he attempts to flush them, and sees that it’s raining, getting heavier by the second, the rainwater bucketing down now almost vertically. The close, stifling heat of summer has broken with a vengeance. It falls onto his face, into his eyes, his opened mouth, and mingles with the warm rivulets trailing down his cheeks. He has never been so delighted to see rain, and he cries for sheer relief and pleasure. He resolves there and then never, for the length of his remaining life, to complain that it’s raining cats and dogs.

Again, the sky is riven by a flash of light and he sees lightning fork overhead. He counts, as he always did when he was a child. One, two, three, four… but the sound of thunder never comes.

He strains his ears harder, but realises there is no sound at all. He starts to panic, scrabbling at his ears, and ridding them of yet more mud. He digs his fingers in deeper, as if he can tunnel his way to hearing again, and when his hands drop back to his sides, there is a faint register in his left ear, but still nothing in his right.

He raises his head cautiously, chancing a look around him. All is still. Up ahead, he can see a figure trapped on the barbed wire, twitching every now and again. He looks away quickly. Nothing he can do for the poor devil but hope his end comes quickly. All around are the bodies of the men he spent the last two days marching with. He looks to his right and meets the lifeless eyes of Private Brown, leaning awkwardly against a pile of earth with half his chest blown away. He hopes he knew nothing about it when it happened.

He raises his head further, emboldened by the fact that no mortars have yet come his way. It seems the fighting has moved on. In his chest he can still feel the rumble of mortars landing, but they seem much further away than they had when he was preparing to go over the top. Even the stretcher bearers have abandoned this part of the battlefield, following in the wake of the active fighting with all casualties from Ben’s battalion assumed accounted for. Except they have been less than thorough.

From somewhere to his left, with what he supposes is now his good ear, despite how little it’s registering, he hears a quiet call. Help! It’s so quiet he wonders if he’s imagined it at first. He lies still, holding his breath to listen for it again. Help me!

To his left is a mound of earth, thrown up by one of the mortars that did for most of the battalion. He can see a boot sticking out from its base, moving slowly from time to time, and he crawls over to it. He sees that the mound is at the edge of a crater, and as he rounds the earth he sees a shoulder and a head exposed.

“I’m here,” he calls softly. “Who needs help?”

At the sound of his voice, the head swivels in his direction and in a face that’s streaked with mud he sees a pair of blue eyes, filled with pain. Callum Highway.

He scrambles over to him and lays a hand on his shoulder. “I’m here. Tell me yer injuries.” “Me leg,” says Callum, turning his head to indicate his left side.  
Ben wipes rainwater out of his eyes and tries to follow the other man’s lips as he speaks, but curses when he comes up blank. He gently places his hands either side of Callum’s head and guides him round to face him. “I can’t hear ya. Speak slowly, Callum. Where are ya hurt?”

Callum looks bemused for a second or two, but then realisation dawns in his eyes. “Me leg,” he repeats.

Ben surveys the scene in front of him. He can see that Callum is half-entombed in the mud, trapped fast under the mound of earth, and it’s a true stroke of luck that only the left side of his body was caught. If he’d been buried completely, he would have suffocated by now. “I’m goin’ to dig you out,” Ben tells him, and sets about scrabbling at the earth with his hands. He glances over at Callum as he works, holding eye contact for a few seconds at a time. “Will ya stay with me? Talk to me. Tell me about yer home.”

Callum grimaces in pain as he begins to speak in a quiet monotone. “Nothin’ much to tell. I live with me father and me mother and me brother. We live in a small terraced house in Stratford.”

Ben can only hear one word in every twenty or so, but he makes appropriate noises, encouraging the other man to stay calm and alert as he slowly but steadily digs him out from under the earth, uncovering his body bit by bit. Every now and again he stops what he’s doing and strokes the rainwater away from Callum’s face, smearing the mud as he does so. He looks carefully at every part of his body he uncovers and says a small prayer to a god he had no belief in just yesterday that Callum appears relatively unscathed.

He works steadily, the earth compacting underneath his fingernails and staining his hands and wrists, the rain drenching him through to the skin. When he comes to Callum’s hip, the man cries out. “Alright, alright,” mutters Ben. “Have courage.”

He slows his pace, partly to spare Callum pain, partly because he dreads what he’s about to uncover. Callum’s uniform is soaked with blood from his hip to his knee, mud mingling with the scarlet stain to produce a rust-coloured patch nearer his knee, but the leg itself appears intact. “Yer in one piece,” he says, darting a look up at Callum’s face. He looks more closely at the wound. “I reckon you got hit by a bullet. Before the shell that buried ya in all this godforsaken earth. Which part hurts the most?”

He watches Callum’s lips carefully as he speaks. “Me thigh.”

Ben gently traces a hand up the leg, watching Callum for signs of discomfort. When his hand passes over an area six inches from Callum’s hip, the older man cries out again. Ben peers at the area more closely. The material of Callum’s trousers is ripped apart, but the tear goes diagonally across the leg. There’s no hole in the skin beneath. Ben dares to hope that this means Callum was grazed by a bullet, rather than being shot through the thigh. He smiles up at him. “Soon have ya out of here. Bit of luck you’ll be invalided out til the war finishes.”

Callum tries a weak smile back at him, and Ben’s reminded of the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled at him back at the lake. It warms his heart. “You’ve stopped talkin’ to me,” he says, watching Callum’s lips again closely. “Tell me more about yer home life.”

“I can’t think of no more to tell,” says Callum. “I ain’t a very interestin’ person.”

“No? Well perhaps I’m savin’ the wrong person then. Perhaps I should look for someone a bit more entertainin’.”

Callum smiles wider at that, and Ben is unaccountably grateful. He digs away the last of the earth pinning Callum, and is pleased to see there’s no more damage. “Right,” he says after completing his task. “Let’s see if you can move.”

He looks around him, bemused once again that the area around them, so chaotic and full of noise and movement before, is now deserted and silent as the grave. He tries to work out his bearings. He knows the strip of barbed wire was ahead of them when they went over the top, so if they crawl away from it, they should come upon the trenches without too much delay. He turns back to Callum. “Can you crawl?”

He sees his lips move. “I can try.” “Good lad. Follow my lead.”  
They make slow, painful progress across the mud, careful to keep as low to the ground as they can in case there are still enemy posts just across the other side of the barbed wire. Ben drops back to crawl alongside Callum so that he can monitor his welfare. His face is grim, his lips set against the pain, and rather than crawl, which puts pressure on his damaged leg, he slithers along the ground on his right side, casting a man-sized trail behind himself in the mud.

Eventually, after progressing past bodies and around water-filled craters, they come to the lip of one of the trenches. Ben stills and places a warning hand on Callum’s arm. There may still be men in the trench, and the last thing they want is to be shot as the suspected enemy after making it this far.

“Can you hear anything?” he whispers to Callum.

Callum listens with his head on one side for a few seconds, then shakes his head.

“Alright, then let me go first.” Ben crawls right up to the lip of the trench and peers over with his heart in his mouth. It’s empty. The nearest ladder is a few yards to their right, so he beckons to Callum and crawls towards it. “I’ll go first,” he says, still speaking in a low voice. “You come after, and if your leg gives you pain, just fall back. I’ll catch you, alright?”

Callum nods. They slip and slide down the ladder and tumble into the trench in a tangle of limbs, and Callum lets out another cry at the impact on his leg.

“Steady, steady,” says Ben, cradling him momentarily from where he’d tumbled onto him. He extricates himself from underneath him, and manages to prop him up against the side of the trench. “Stay here, I’m going to do a bit of reconnoitring. Stay quiet, you hear?”

Callum nods, wide-eyed, and Ben sets off, heading for the point to their left where the trench bends out of sight. It’s eerily quiet. Here and there are items cast off by the men who inhabited these trenches for the shortest of times before going to a place where none of these possessions would be any further use to them. A bible tossed on its spine against the trench wall, its open pages translucent and sticking together in the rain; a few mess tins scattered here and there; playing cards, a photograph of someone’s sweetheart from back home, mud-spattered and abandoned.

Ben creeps further along towards the blind bend, holding his breath to listen out for noises coming from beyond. He peers around the corner of the wall when he reaches it, breathing again when he

sees that the next stretch is empty too. Halfway along is a recess in the wall, bigger than any of the dog-holes the troops had slept in on their last nights. An officer’s quarters, set back from the rest of the trench and partly concealed by hessian sacks that serve as a makeshift curtain.

Ben enters cautiously and looks around. To the right is a camp bed, made up with a real blanket, albeit rough to the touch as he smooths his hand over it. On the left are makeshift shelves housing an assortment of items. Ben hears Private Brown’s voice cursing in his head. Brown had been a staunch socialist and was convinced that change was going to come. What wouldn’t he have said if he’d been presented with this evidence of the inequalities in life! Ben hears him railing against injustice, and sends a thought to him, wherever he may be now.

He peruses the contents of the shelves, marvelling at what he finds. He quickly rips the blanket from the camp bed and starts to make a pile of items in the middle of it. A water canteen, three packets of smokes and matches, a couple of tins of bully beef and some more of the hated Machonochie stew, a half-bottle of rum, nearly empty and – heavens! – a half-eaten bar of Cadbury’s chocolate.

When he’s put together as much as he thinks he’ll be able to carry comfortably, Ben ties up the corners of the blanket around it all and hoists it onto his shoulder. As he works he formulates a plan. He thinks the fighting has moved on ahead of them and they’re a sufficient way from danger. He has no idea which direction to take to get to an ambulance station, but he does know that Callum won’t be able to walk for days on end with his leg the way it is. No, they’re going to have to find somewhere to camp out while he recovers, and seek out what’s left of their battalion once he’s fit again. A sneaky voice in Ben’s head tells him it might make more sense to camp out somewhere until the entire war is over, but he pushes it to the back of his mind. He doesn’t want to have saved Private Highway only to see him shot for desertion.

He turns to leave the officer’s quarters and his eye alights on a pen-knife, hanging from a hook just inside the doorway. He takes it down and shoves it into his breast-pocket, then makes his way back to Callum.

The rain has eased off now, and Ben’s uniform is itchy and tight around him as it begins to dry out. Callum is still propped up against the trench wall where Ben left him, his legs outstretched in front of him. He casts a frightened glance round as he hears Ben approaching, but his eyes clear with relief as he sees him. Ben crouches down in front of him and sheds the load from his shoulder. “Right, Private Highway, listen carefully. We can’t stay here, more troops might arrive any second, so we’re goin’ to have to make our way out that way - ” Ben points to the top of the wall opposite the one they’d just descended, “- and find somewhere to camp out while yer leg gets better.”

This presents its own challenges at the very first step. The wall to the trench is a good twelve to fourteen feet high, and there are no footholds as far as Ben can see. The same thought has evidently struck Callum, if the despairing look he gives Ben is any indication. “Leave me,” he says. “If more troops come along, then I’ll be taken to an ambulance station, won’t I?”

Or be sent straight over the top again, thinks Ben. “Have courage,” he mutters. He holds up a hand, telling Callum to stay put, and sets off in the other direction along the trench. A couple of hundred yards along, the wooden beams that hold up the walls are exposed, the earth behind them crumbling. The whole structure looks entirely unsound, but Ben wonders if there would be enough footholds there for them to scramble their way out of the trench. If the whole thing comes tumbling down, then so be it, as long as they’ve reached the top before that happens.

He turns and makes his way back to Callum, plans fermenting in his mind. “I think I see a way out,” he tells him. “But first, we need to look at that wound of yours.”

As the rumble of artillery sounds again in the distance, he crouches beside Callum’s injured leg and pulls gently at the ripped material of his trousers to expose more of the flesh around the wound. It’s caked in mud and Ben fears that infection may soon set in. He pulls his handkerchief from his pocket and spits on a corner of it, then gently dabs at the exposed skin. Callum draws in a sharp breath as he accidentally passes over the wound itself.

“Sorry! Sorry!” says Ben, alerted by the way Callum’s body convulses.

He unties a corner of the blanket into which he’d packed all their provisions, and roots around until his hand closes over the bottle of rum, then pulls it out and unscrews the cap. Folding the handkerchief over to make a pad of clean material, he douses it in the rum and then holds it over the wound. “This might well hurt,” he tells Callum, screwing the bottle back up. “Here, grab onto me hand.”

Callum nods fearfully and does as he’s told, and Ben draws the kerchief gently over the wound, stroking harder as he sees the flesh begin to look cleaner, feeling Callum’s hand tighten around his fingers as he does so.

“Courage,” says Ben, glancing up to see the pain knitting Callum’s forehead. “Nearly there.”

He douses the kerchief with rum again, unscrewing the bottle and up-ending it onto the kerchief one-handedly with not a little difficulty, and sets about cleaning the wound one more time. Callum rests his head back against the trench wall and takes deep breaths. Looking at him, Ben can see sweat springing out on his face.

Once all the mud is cleared away and the wound is looking pink and as healthy as it can be, Ben’s relieved to see that it was as he’d thought. The bullet had grazed Callum without entering.  
Admittedly it had grazed deep, but there would be no rooting around to be done, trying to extract a bullet.

He breathes out the air he’d been holding. “I think you may live,” he comments, glancing up at Callum to see an expression of rapt gratitude on the other man’s face as he releases his hand. “Now, we need to get away from here so that they don’t assess you fit for active service and send you straight back over the top again.”

“Desert?” asks Callum.

“No, we’re not deserting, we’re withdrawing until you’re fitter,” corrects Ben. “We’ll find an ambulance station and they can take care of you. Oh! I nearly forgot!” He roots around in the blanket again and pulls out the half-eaten chocolate bar. “Here.”

Callum’s face lights up at the sight. He grins at Ben and takes the bar, breaking what’s left in two and handing him half.

“No, no, you have it,” says Ben. “I can live without chocolate. From the expression on yer face you’d find that more difficult, I reckon.”

“I shall save the rest, in case you change yer mind,” says Callum, nibbling a corner of his own helping and throwing his head back with an expression of ecstasy and a moan that even Ben hears. Ben watches him, feeling warmth spread through his chest at the sight. Silly, how sentimental he’s become at having his life given back to him.

He wraps the remaining chocolate and places it back in the blanket as Callum finishes the rest of his serving slowly, savouring every last morsel. Ben ties together the corners of the blanket again

and hoists it onto his back. “Right, this way.”

Callum gets to his feet with difficulty, and follows him back along the trench. “It feels a little easier,” he says, prodding at the area around his wound as they reach the wooden beams Ben believes will aid their ascent.

“Good, just don’t touch it,” he orders. He gazes up at the wall of the trench, plotting out a route. “Right, Callum. I think we pull ourselves up onto that beam, you see? Just above the earth that’s crumbling? Then we clamber along the horizontal beam to the next upright, and I think there’s a foothold just at the end there, you see?”

Callum nods, his eyes following Ben’s outstretched hand. “We shall have to zig-zag our way upwards.”  
“What about the provisions?” asks Callum.

Ben thinks for a second. “I shall wait down here and throw ‘em up to you once yer on the top. You reach down and catch ‘em as best you can, alright?”

“Alright.” Callum starts to clamber onto the first beam, wincing and holding his left leg awkwardly, but then turns back to Ben. “What if there are still snipers posted across the way?”

“I’ve not heard anything from over there all the time we’ve bin here,” says Ben. “I think the fighting has well and truly left us behind.”

Callum looks doubtful, but nods in any case and resumes his efforts to climb. As he springs from the first horizontal beam to the next, it dislodges, sending a shower of soil back down onto Ben.

Callum glances down at him in panic, but Ben waves him on. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll find a way out.”

He watches as Callum drags himself ever upward, until at last his hands are scrabbling for purchase on the top lip of the wall and after a second’s hesitation he pulls himself over, letting out a groan as the nerve endings in his leg object strongly to the exertion.

He disappears out of sight, but a second later his face reappears over the lip. “It’s all clear up here,” he calls down quietly. “Send up the provisions.”

Ben gathers the bundled provisions and tries to throw them up in their blanket, but they’re an awkward package and they fall back to his feet. He realises he’s going to have to untie the bundle and throw them up one by one. He calls up to Callum explaining that that’s what he’s going to do, and Callum nods, lying on his stomach and stretching out his hands to begin catching them. He makes a face as he catches a tin of the dreaded Machonochie’s stew.

Ben glances behind himself every now and again as they work their way through the contents of the blanket, anxious in case more troops pass through on their way up to the frontline, wherever that may be now. With his hearing the way it is, he wouldn’t know their presence until they were directly upon him. Eventually, after he’s failed to throw one of the packs of cigarettes anywhere near Callum’s outstretched hands for the second time, he realises there’s a better way. “Callum,” he calls up quietly. “Step back. I’ll throw everything over the top and you gather them up from where they fall, alright?”

Callum gives him a thumbs-up and disappears, and Ben begins lobbing the remaining items over. Then he ties the blanket around his shoulders and begins his own ascent. The wall of the trench is  
more unstable now, but it means he can scuff footholds into the softer earth that’s been disturbed. It’s still a struggle though, and he wonders how on earth Callum made it with his injury. He reaches the top and rolls sideways onto his stomach to get onto firmer land, and sees that Callum has more or less gathered all their provisions in the time it’s taken him to climb the wall.

He takes a moment to recapture his breath and then they make quick work of bundling the provisions back into the blanket and Ben scans the horizon, trying to work out which is the best direction to take. The fighting is away to their east, he thinks. A long way over to the west, the land becomes greener, and there’s a dip between the fields that he thinks may indicate a stream or river. Beyond, a wood stands out stark against the skyline.

“That way,” he decides aloud, indicating with an outstretched arm, and Callum falls into step beside him, limping painfully. They cross further expanses of battlefield, left abandoned incrementally as their troops gained an advantage and pushed forward towards enemy territory, and all around is the stench of death. The further they walk, the more decomposed are the bodies they pass, and several times they have to alter course to avoid huge craters in the land, filled with water and more decay, bodies of both men and horses.

There are no roadways here, so they pick their way silently towards the unaffected countryside as best they can, their progress slow because of Callum’s injury. The rain has passed now and the temperature is rising again, and Ben sweats under the twin discomforts of his scratchy uniform and the blanket of provisions he carries. He’s thirsty, too. They’ll have to find water before long or they’ll become dehydrated.

It’s late in the afternoon before they reach what is indeed a small stream running below an incline that leads up to the wood Ben had seen earlier. He darts a look at Callum and sees that the other man is exhausted. Under the pretence of needing to cool his feet in the stream, he suggests they stop, and sees gratitude flash across his features.

“It’s bin bleedin’ again,” announces Callum, inspecting his thigh as he sits on the bank of the stream.

Ben calls to him from where he’s paddling in the cool water. “Badly?” “Not too bad,” says Callum. “It’s weepin’ a bit though.”

“We’ll bathe it in alcohol again when we stop for the night,” says Ben. He looks around him, thinking their best course of action would be to head for the wood at the top of the hill and seek out a sheltered hollow to bed down in. “You think you can walk a little further? Just to the wood up ahead?”

“Once I’ve rested for a while,” says Callum. He’s pale, and pain is etched on his features.

Ben dips his hand in the stream and tentatively tastes the water. “You think this would be healthy to drink?”

“It looks clear enough,” says Callum.

“Madness ain’t it?” asks Ben. “Not ten miles back that way there’s all that carnage and hell, and here, the water’s sweet and the land is green.”

He sees that Callum is resting back on his hands, his face turned to the sun and his eyes closed. “Carnage and hell,” he repeats in a quiet voice. “It surely was that.”

Before they set off again, Ben fills the water canteen and they both drink from it. Then he refills it and packs it back into the blanket. It feels harder to keep going now they’ve stopped, and their progress is not helped by the incline of the hill they need to climb to get to the wood. He tries to keep their spirits up by singing a dancehall song he remembers from back home, huffing out the words as he climbs.

"When I was but a lad there was a girl I loved so true, With hair of flax and eyes of blue, and eyes of blue.  
Now that I’m grown tis I that is blue, but still I remember those beautiful eyes of blue."

Callum joins in, echoing the last word of every line, and they grin at each other as they near the top of the hill.

It’s cool and shady within the wood, and they see that the stream they’d stopped in earlier runs through its middle. They walk on until they find a hollow in a clearing set back from the water, and Callum collapses onto the ground as soon as they stop. “I can’t go another step.”

“You don’t need to,” says Ben. “Stop here and I’ll go and check we’ll be safe. Don’t want to be taken unawares, do we?”

He wanders a few hundred yards in either direction, checking whether they’ve inadvertently stumbled upon the rear of a farm or other dwelling, but their location seems to be deserted, and he goes back to Callum satisfied that they should be able to sleep the night without being disturbed.

They share a meal of cold stew from one of the tins, which Ben pierces and opens using the pen- knife he’d taken from the officer’s quarters back at the trench. Callum grimaces throughout and Ben begins to realise that he’s quite particular about his food. He finds it quite endearing.

After, as the day turns to dusk, Ben smokes a cigarette as Callum beds down for the night on a bed of moss, covered by the blanket.

“I’m quite shattered,” says Callum.

Ben frowns, unable to hear what he’d said. “Hmm?” “I said, I’m shattered.”

“Oh! Yes, me too. I shall sleep like the dead tonight.”

Callum gives him a look, and on reflection Ben realises that his comment wasn’t the most appropriate he could have chosen. He takes a last drag on his cigarette and flicks it into the water, and then crosses to lie beside Callum.

“You should come under the blanket,” says Callum. “You’ll be cold in the night.”

Ben does as he’s told, moving closer and pulling some of the blanket over his shoulders.

He’s just settling, when Callum sits up and looks closely at him. “Thank you.” He sees that Ben hasn’t heard him and takes his face in both his hands. “Thank you. For today. I owe you my life.”

“Hardly,” says Ben, bashful.

Callum nods to reinforce his point. “I do.” He runs gentle hands over the side of Ben’s head. “How much hearing have you lost?”

“I can hear a little in me left,” says Ben. “Nothin’ in me right.” 

“I’m sorry,” says Callum. He lies back down on Ben’s left, and they wait for sleep in silence. Ben is not sure it will come. Now they’ve stopped for the night the full horror of the last day is revisiting him in vivid detail. He shivers, and then rolls over and puts an arm around Callum’s waist. Callum tenses for a second, but then relaxes. It seems they both need comfort that night.

They lie quietly, listening to the sounds of the wood around them. Ben startles at a harsh barking sound, loud enough even for him to hear, and Callum rubs his arm soothingly. “Shh, nothin’ to be afraid of. ‘S just a fox. We have lots of them where I live. Foxes in the middle of the city. Strange, when you think of it.”

“Not so strange,” murmurs Ben. “We’re the opposite, ain’t we? City foxes in the middle of the countryside.”

Callum huffs a laugh. “I suppose we are,” and Ben falls asleep to the feel of his fingers circling patterns on his arm.

Chapter 3

13th August 1917 (Zillebeke)

It’s still dark when Ben is awoken by frantic movement next to him, followed by a kick to the shin. He sits up immediately and reaches for the man lying next to him, his heart pounding. Callum is in the middle of a nightmare. He thrashes around next to Ben and screams out.

“Callum,” Ben lays his hand on the man’s shoulder, pinning him down. “Callum, it’s alright. Yer safe. Hush now.”

Callum’s body stills, but Ben guesses from his laboured breathing he’s still asleep. He curls himself around him and feels his chest rising and falling, the rhythm slowing as Callum’s panic passes.

The next time he wakes, it’s morning and Callum is no longer next to him. He sits up blearily and rubs a hand over his face. The wood is alive with birdsong and there’s a weak mist which will soon be burnt off by the sun. It’s gorgeous, although every morning he’s still alive will be gorgeous from now on.

“Mornin’ sleepin’ beauty!”

He hears the voice but can’t tell where it’s coming from, until he casts around and sees Callum splashing about barefoot in the stream below, his trousers turned up to his knees.

“Thought I’d cool me feet after all that walkin’ yesterday.” “How’s the leg?”

Callum picks at the tear in his trousers and peers in at the skin. “Holdin’ up I think. It ain’t bled any more in the night.”

“Good, that’s good,” says Ben, falling onto his back again. He’s exhausted, and the fact that he slept relatively well, apart from the disturbance with Callum, seems to be making him tireder still, as if there are successive waves of exhaustion all waiting in turn to make themselves felt. If he sleeps for a week he thinks he’ll only just be starting to recover.

Callum picks his way out of the stream and across to Ben, taking care not to step on any stinging nettles or sharp stones. He stops in front of him, his ankles level with Ben’s nose. The dark hair on his shins is matted by the stream, and Ben watches as water runs in droplets down to his feet.

“Thought I’d wait for you to wake before I ate,” says Callum, his body silhouetted against the sunlight that’s already streaming through the trees behind him.

“Very considerate of you.” Ben sits up again. “What gourmet delight shall we settle for today, d’ya think? Finest bully beef, or a helping of Machonochie’s best?”

“Please, not Machonochie’s,” says Callum, sitting cross-legged beside him. He sneezes three times in quick succession.

“Bless you.” Ben reaches over to their little pile of provisions and takes the pen-knife from his breast pocket, then opens it and digs the end of the blade into a tin of bully beef. “We shall have to find more food soon,” he comments, cutting carefully round the top of the tin. He calculates that if

they’re steady, they’ll have enough for another day and a half. With luck and a good tail-wind, they should come upon an ambulance station by then.

“We could kill a rabbit,” suggests Callum. “Roast ‘im over a fire.” “You ever caught a rabbit?” asks Ben.

“Nah,” says Callum, in a tone of voice that suggests this isn’t the insurmountable problem Ben considers it. He gazes beyond Ben. “D’ya think this water gets any deeper upstream?”

“Dunno.”

“I’d give anythin’ for a bathe, just to get this mud off me. We could wash our clothes an’ all.” He grins at Ben. “Imagine! Clean drawers and socks!”

“They’d be soakin’ wet though,” Ben points out.

“Nah, not if we dried ‘em off in the sun. We ain’t in a hurry are we?”

Ben grins back at him. “Think yer on yer holidays, do ya Private Highway?”

Once they’ve finished off the bully beef between them and drunk from the stream, Ben replenishes the canteen as Callum packs their provisions back into the blanket, and they set off, following the water upstream. By noon, the sun is high in the sky again and it’s warm even in the shady wood.

The stream runs close to the edge of the wood at some points, and at one such stretch Callum grins round at Ben. “This bit’s deep enough for a swim. What d’ya say?”

Ben has blisters on his heels, and he’s been keeping a close eye on Callum. The older man has started limping quite noticeably again in the last hour and Ben thinks it would be no bad thing for either of them if they rested a while. He’s not going to let Callum know that though, so he makes a pantomime of being persuaded, before they set down their provisions and start stripping off.

“Aaargh! It’s freezin’” exclaims Callum as he wades into the deeper water in the middle of the stream. “Throw us me drawers and socks, Ben. An’ me vest.”

“I ain’t touchin’ yer drawers!” says Ben. Nevertheless, he picks up the clothes and tosses them to Callum so he can start soaking them. They land on the water, light as feathers.

“We need to lay ‘em out on that side of the stream,” says Callum, pointing at the far side. “Otherwise the sun won’t get at ‘em an’ they’ll never dry.”

“What d’ya propose to do while they’re dryin’?” asks Ben. 

“Sunbathe!”

Ben shakes his head, charmed by Callum’s enthusiasm for life. He really does seem to think he’s on holiday. This morning there’s been no sign of the terror he was living through during the night. He’s a rewarding companion, easy-going and cheerful for the most part.

Ben strips off and runs quickly into the water, gasping at the chill, then sets about washing his own underclothes. He can feel the stones at the bottom of the stream, slippery with algae under his feet, and every now and again an underwater reed tangles around his ankles. “Reckon there might be fish in here,” he says, peering into the water. “’S a healthy enough stream, dontcha think?”

“Could be,” says Callum crossing to the far side of the water to lay his clothes out flat on the bank. “You gotta look out for predators to know what else is around. You see a kingfisher, it means there’s fish.”

“How d’ya know this stuff?” asks Ben, wringing out his socks.

“Me grandad. He used to take me fishin’ out along the canal and explain to me all about nature an’ things.” Callum beckons to Ben. “‘Ere, throw us yer clothes.”

Ben does as he asks and Callum catches them, then lays them out alongside his own. 

“This is quite blissful,” exclaims Ben as he turns onto his back and begins floating a little downstream. “Who’da thought we’d be here today, when you think of where we was yesterday.”

Callum shudders. “Don’t remind me.” He flops back into the water, then flips over onto his front and does a couple of strong strokes of breaststroke to draw level with Ben. “I ain’t never bin that terrified, ever.” He turns onto his back and floats alongside Ben. “You think we’ll havta go back at some point?”

“When we’re fit enough. If this war ain’t over soon.” 

“Even you, with yer hearin’ shot?”

“Dunno. I don’t think it’s quite so bad today. Still never gonna be right, but…” 

“Anythin’ in yer right ear?”

“Nah, nothin’.”

“Well then,” says Callum, pronouncing his verdict. “You won’t go back, will ya? They couldn’t send ya over with messed up hearin’.”

“We’ll see,” says Ben. He doesn’t even want to think about it. He can feel his soul healing with every second he spends in this wood with Callum. Decisions on where he goes next can be made by someone else at some other time. He stands up again and begins washing himself, rubbing his face hard to rid it of the mud that’s caked into his very pores, and swilling out his ears. The water makes a gurgling sound in his left ear. In his right, there’s nothing.

Once clean, they lie side by side on the bank next to their rapidly drying clothes. The sun is fierce overhead, and Ben finds himself lulled almost to sleep by the warmth and the sound of the birds in the trees behind them. He turns onto his back and watches clouds drift lazily across a blue sky, and sighs contentedly. Beside him Callum is snoring quietly with his head resting on his arms. The only thing that would make this moment more perfect is a smoke, but Ben realises with a quiet curse that they’ve left the bundle of provisions on the other side of the stream, along with the rest of their clothes. He gets up reluctantly and wades back across to bring them over, then settles next to Callum again and digs around for the cigarettes and matches. Once his cigarette is lit, he takes a long drag and sighs contentedly again, watching the whorls of smoke rise up into the sky and dissipate into nothing. He picks a strand of tobacco from his lip and thinks again of Private Brown, his chest smashed to smithereens, and wonders at the sense of it. So many lives lost to gain so few feet of land. And what happens at the end of it all? Who decides the winner? There must be some other way of deciding such a thing, without sending thousands upon thousands of terrified young men to their deaths.

Beside him, Callum wakes with another sneeze, and turns over onto his back. “You know what we ain’t heard today?”

“Nah?”

“Gunfire. Artillery. The fightin’ must be headin’ off in that direction.” He points lazily towards the east. “An’ ya know what that means?”

“What?”

“We ain’t gonna come upon an ambulance station if we keep headin’ this way, are we?”

“Probably not,” says Ben. “We’ll probably find a village soon enough though. Then we can find help in gettin’ back to where we need to be.”

Callum is silent, not disputing the wisdom of Ben’s suggestion. After a minute or two he sits up and looks down at the wound on his leg. “D’ya think this is gettin’ septic? I can’t tell. It’s itchin’ a lot. Would ya look for me?”

“If it’s itchin’ it must be gettin’ better.” Ben rolls over and glances at the wound, running his finger gently over the undamaged skin around the edge, and then a queer feeling comes over him.  
Callum’s sex is right there, not six inches from his fingers. Ben is shocked to find himself feeling lightheaded and butterflies awaken in his stomach. He feels blood flowing to where it shouldn’t be flowing, and glances up to see if Callum has noticed, but the older man’s head is still bent over his injury. Ben quickly turns over onto his front and takes another long drag from his cigarette. “Looks alright to me. I can’t see anythin’ wrong with it,” he says when he trusts himself to speak again.

He takes a deep breath and stands up, casting around for his clothes. “We should get dressed and carry on,” he says, cigarette in mouth. “We need to find shelter before night falls.

Callum stretches luxuriantly, oblivious to the turmoil in Ben’s mind, and Ben quickly turns away. Once dressed again, they make their way along the open side of the stream, still being warmed by the sun, and he tries to calm himself. He’s heard about men who like to act as women, of course he has, but he’s no pansy. He can’t account for the way he’d felt when his brain had sent signals to him, telling him that he would only have had to move his fingers a little to the right and he could have taken Callum in his fist – but to what end? How could a man possibly make another man feel as a wife should? He can’t fathom it, and he certainly can’t fathom why that thought should have seared itself into his brain at that exact moment. Callum is an innocent. When Ben thinks about how easy it would have been to sully him, he shivers in horror. His fingers twitch at the memory.

He walks in silence and is brusque every time Callum tries to make conversation, until the older man gives up and trails behind him a little. Later, Ben hears him singing to himself about a pair of blue eyes, their song from yesterday. He repeats the lines over and over until they’re emblazoned in Ben’s mind, and they both fall into the steady rhythm dictated by the song.

The longer they walk, the more Ben is able to convince himself that what he felt had been an aberration, an hysterical response brought on by the terrors of the last couple of days. It’s nothing he’s felt before, and probably never will again. He’s tired, that’s all there is to it.

It’s getting late before they chance upon a big stone barn that might make an adequate shelter for the night. It’s the first possibility they’ve seen all day. They creep round its perimeter to see what’s on the other side and discover that it’s part of a farm. Close by is an orchard; through a stone arch more farm buildings; beyond, a farmhouse; and to the far side of the barn a pond. From where they stand they can see a muted light in the window of the farmhouse.

They carry out a whispered debate about the dangers involved in spending the night so close to an inhabited farm. The farmhouse itself is a good three hundred yards from the barn, but from it

Callum reports hearing the muffled sound of a dog barking. It’s unlikely anyone will come out to the barn at this time of night, but they would need to be up and away before sunrise to avoid discovery. Ben tries to weigh up points in favour and points against, but the deciding factor is the sheer exhaustion on Callum’s face again. In the dim light he looks almost grey, and his eyes are glazed.

Decision made, Ben pushes cautiously at the door to the barn. It’s a huge, heavy door, one of a pair, rising to almost three times Callum’s height, but the hinges are well-oiled and they give silently. As he slips inside he sees from the fading daylight that the barn is vaulted, with a raised platform at the far end that houses bales of hay, all stacked neatly upon one another. On the ground floor are a range of farm implements, along with a couple of piles of hessian sacks. A narrow opening at the very apex of the front wall lets in a little light.

Following behind him, Callum whistles softly as he sees the size of the place. “’S like a church!” He crosses to the piles of sacks and begins rooting through them, sniffing one to determine what it might have contained. “Reckon we can bed down on these, don’t you?” His last word explodes on another sneeze, and he wipes his nose on the sleeve of his tunic.

“Let’s have a look around,” suggests Ben. He crosses to stand below the raised platform, where a ladder three or four feet taller than him gives access to the space up above. Climbing up and peering over the edge, he sees that behind the first row of hay bales are another two or three rows, beyond which is a dark space he thinks may be an empty wooden floor. Another narrow opening at the apex of the far wall gives a little more light, and as he gazes around he sees that its twin at little more than head height on the adjacent wall will probably give a view of the farmhouse across the way. A good hiding place, if only for one night. “I think this’ll do,” he calls back softly to Callum. “Bring some sacks.”

“We could fill ‘em with hay,” suggests Callum. “Make a nice comfy bed for the night.”

“Two nice comfy beds,” corrects Ben, still shaken by his thoughts of the afternoon.

They clamber up to the platform and worm their way in between the bales of hay to the space beyond. It’s a little dusty, and cobwebs hang in every corner, but it will certainly do. He uses the pen-knife to saw at the twine binding the hay bale closest to them and they tear out handfuls of hay and stuff the hessian sacks with them, plumping them as they go, and when they’re satisfied they finally lie down to sleep.

“We’ll have to be gone by first light,” whispers Ben as they lie beside each other but with a safe distance between them. It occurs to him that the better course of action would be to knock on the door of the farmhouse in the morning and seek assistance in getting back to what’s left of their battalion. However it seems they may have tacitly agreed, without a single debate, that this is no longer their goal.

As if to confirm his thoughts, Callum turns to face him in the dark. “Ben?” 

“Hmm?”

“I know it’s wrong, but… I can’t go back. I’d rather kill meself than die at the hands of someone else in that hell.”

Ben is silent. Outside, an owl hoots close by. Callum takes his silence for disapproval. “I know that makes me a coward, and I know you’ll think less of me, but I’d give anythin’ to be able to sit out the rest of the war.”

Ben hears rustling as he shifts around on his makeshift bed.

“I feel ashamed just sayin’ the words, but…” Ben hears him huff out a breath. “It ain’t FAIR!”

“Shh,” soothes Ben, afraid the other man is working himself up so much that he’ll give them away. “Hush, Callum.”

“No! I must say me piece! Bein’ back in England, you believe everything they say, that this is a just war; that we must all do our bit. But then you come over here and you see the way it’s bein’ fought, an’ -.” Callum tuts, and after a second’s pause, changes tack. “I ain’t got no argument with the Hun. I ain’t even met one, to me knowledge, so why should I be set on trying to kill ‘em?” He sniffs loudly. “I don’t wanna die. An’ if that makes me a coward, or a traitor, then so be it.”

“It don’t,” says Ben eventually. “It makes you a darned sight more sensible than half the men who’ve sent us out ‘ere.” He places his hands behind his head on his makeshift pillow. “I don’t think any less of ya, Callum, course I don’t.”

They lie quietly, listening to the owl hooting from nearby outside, and finally, after Ben thinks Callum must have fallen asleep, the older man sighs. “I feel so darned exhausted.”

“Get some rest then,” says Ben, turning on his bed to face him. “Don’t stay awake worryin’. We’ll move on tomorrow, work out a plan.”

“And stay away from any ambulance station?” 

“And stay away from any ambulance station.”

Some hours later, Ben is awoken by something running over his foot. He opens his eyes and hears squeaking and rustling from in amongst the hay bales. Rats, or mice. The moonlight is flooding in through the window at the apex of the wall, and he watches dust motes floating in the strip of air it illuminates in a cold blue light.

On the other makeshift bed, Callum is in the middle of another nightmare. He thrashes around and emits a low moan every now and again.

Ben crosses to crouch beside him, anxious that they shouldn’t be discovered here. “Callum,” he whispers, seeing sweat pouring from the man’s face in the pale light. He touches his cheek to try and wake him gently, and his fingers burn. The man is a furnace. Not only is he having a nightmare, he has a fever. He’s babbling quietly in between the moaning, and when he finally wakes at Ben’s touch, his eyes are glazed and unseeing.

Chapter 4

15th August 1917 (Zillebeke)

Ben itches for a cigarette but he can’t chance drawing attention to their whereabouts. Yesterday he’d dragged a hay bale underneath the window that faces the farm and he sits on it now, scuffing the toe of his boot across the dust on the floor, tracing out patterns and shapes. They’ve been here two nights. Longer than he’d wanted, especially given their agreement on their first night that they were no longer seeking to be reunited with their battalion but rather taking every necessary action to avoid it all costs. Across on one of the makeshift beds, Callum is sweating out a fever, asleep more than awake, and babbling nonsense waking or sleeping. A couple of times Ben has had to crouch beside him and coax him into silence. On one occasion, when that had not succeeded, he’d simply placed his hand across the older man’s mouth until the noise subsided. Callum’s eyes had flickered open momentarily before sleep claimed him again.

So far they’ve been lucky. No one has ventured into the barn, but he knows the farm is inhabited. Yesterday he’d stood on the hay bale underneath the window and peered out, watching comings and goings for much of the morning. The only person he’s seen, on more than one occasion, is a young woman who wears her hair in pigtails, and attends to her duties in the orchard and some of the other farm buildings with a speckled blue collie in tow. Always in tow. From time to time he hears her calling him to heel in a harsh language that sounds neither French nor German. It’s the dog that worries Ben. He can probably over-power the woman if he needs to - or charm her - depending on the demands of the situation, but he’d rather not have to, and it’s the dog that will sniff them out.

He has other worries, too. Their supplies are all but exhausted. If he can’t get out to find some food, it will make no odds whether Callum recovers or not. They’re almost out of water too. The last time he shook the canteen he estimated there were only a couple of mouthfuls left. He’s thirsty himself, but he needs to leave them for Callum. He’s got to keep him hydrated as best he can. The air is close in the barn, especially when the sun is high up in the sky, and Ben suspects they’re in for more thunder soon. The temperature has been steadily rising in all the time they’ve been here and the weather has got to break again soon. He crosses to sit on his own bed of sacks and stares across at Callum. He’s thrown the blanket off in his sleep, and Ben reaches over and tucks it back around him. Callum’s face is red, his forehead still streaming with sweat, and his breathing is shallow. From time to time Ben sees his eyes flutter under his eyelids. Whatever sleep he’s getting is troubled. Ben’s seen no improvement in the two days they’ve been here, and his mind is beginning to conjure up all sorts of flights of fancy. Callum’s caught the plague. His wound has become infected and is slowly poisoning his bloodstream. He’s escaped the hell of the battlefield only to die here.

“C’mon, Private Highway,” mutters Ben. “Don’t leave me here alone.”

He opens his mouth to say more but hears a loud bark from just outside the barn door, and watches, his heart in his mouth, as the door swings open and a triangle of bright sunlight spills across the floor below. He cranes his neck to watch the young woman cross the barn floor and pick up a farm implement from the tangle of tools in the far corner. As she does, the dog sniffs its way around the wall until it disappears underneath the platform Ben and Callum are hiding on. Seconds later he hears it bark. The woman calls to it and it trots over to her but then approaches the platform again and recommences barking. Ben can just see it below, its nose is in the air pointing straight at them. It’s sniffed them out. He holds his breath and prays that Callum doesn’t choose this moment to start moaning or babbling again.

The young woman shouts to make herself heard above the sound of the dog’s barks, a stream of words in a language Ben doesn’t understand. Towards the end, he picks out the word ‘ratten’. Rats, perhaps? The young woman thinks the dog is barking at rats in the hay bales. He breathes a sigh of relief as she retreats, the dog still whining as it pads behind her, and the door bangs shut again behind them both.

As he looks down, he sees that Callum’s eyes are open. He opens his mouth to form words but no sounds come out. He tries again, his voice rasping. “Th – thirsty.”

“Thirsty? Here, take some water.” Ben unscrews the canteen and sits beside Callum to cradle his head as he drinks. He swallows and then coughs, spitting out some of the water in the process. “Steady, take it steady. Last drop now.” Ben tosses the empty canteen onto his bed, and places a hand over Callum’s forehead. It still burns to his touch. “How ya feelin’?” he asks.

There’s no reply and he thinks Callum has gone back to sleep, until he looks down and sees that the older man is blinking up at him, his eyes still glazed and tired. He’s shivering, even as his skin feels like he’s burning up. He rolls over and buries his nose in Ben’s thigh, and murmurs, “Talk to me.”

“Hmm?”

Callum looks up again to make eye contact. “Talk to me.” Then he shifts around so that his head is resting on Ben’s thigh and closes his eyes again.

Ben swallows hard. “Um, I don’t know what you want me to talk about. We’re runnin’ low on provisions. I’m goin’ to havta go out and find more water. And food for us both.” He cards his fingers through Callum’s hair absent-mindedly. “You don’t need to worry about that though. That’s probably not what you want me to talk about, is it?” His mind is running overtime, trying to work out how he’s going to find food and water, and despite his comment he finds himself discussing the options out loud. “There’s a well in the farmyard beyond that stone arch. I could wait until dark and draw up water from there, but I risk bein’ discovered. That dog’s got a good ear on it. I’m sure it would hear me. I s’pose I could head back across the fields to the stream. That were good enough for us before, weren’t it?”

Callum hums in response.

“Then there’s food,” says Ben. “I was thinkin’ the orchard. Probably most of the fruit’s gone over by now, but there might be some fallen stuff that we could eke out.” He thinks for a second. “I know what we have still got! The rest of that chocolate ya liked. Once yer feelin’ a bit better you can finish it off, special treat. How d’ya like that, eh?”

He looks down at Callum, but the older man is fast asleep again, his mouth fallen slightly open. Ben tells himself that the reason he doesn’t move back to the relative safety of his own bed is that he doesn’t want to disturb Callum, but in truth, he’s taking comfort from being close to him, as he would being close to any other human being at this time. He’s feeling lonely, and with no one to talk to his mind is running over and over the sights he’d seen on the battlefield. He dares to trace a finger over Callum’s face, gently following the contours of brows, nose, mouth and chin, and talks some more, not caring that Callum isn’t hearing him. He talks about his childhood, his mother leaving when he was only three. About his father, a short-tempered, brutish man who had no idea what to do with a child, his feeling that he was somehow lesser than the other children, and – something he is only now admitting to himself – his indifference as to whether he sees his father or England ever again.

As night falls, Ben decides he’d better go foraging. He kneels beside Callum and wakes him up gently. “Listen, I’m goin’ out to get water and whatever food I can find. You stay quiet here, alright? Don’t call out, no matter what. You hear?”

Callum nods tiredly, and promptly falls back to sleep again, and Ben descends the ladder and picks up one of the hessian sacks from the pile at the door. Opening the door a crack, he peers out to make sure the coast is clear, and then heads back the way they’d arrived, towards the stream. He’s not usually a fanciful man, but he feels himself shuddering as he walks, certain that eyes are watching him, and fights the urge to run. Being a Londoner, he’s never encountered the near-total blackness that descends on the countryside once daylight fades, and it’s fading fast now as he walks. His way is illuminated only by the pale milky light of the moon. He hums ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’ under his breath to keep his spirits up, and is soon at the stream again. He clambers down to the water and takes a drink before quickly filling up the canteen, and then retraces his steps, stumbling on divots in the low light and uneasy at the way the silent trees take on a foreboding air at this time of night. Far away in the distance he hears the harsh bark of the fox again.

Back at the barn, he hesitates, listening out for the woman or the dog. Hearing nothing, he creeps quietly on into the orchard and tries to make out what he can in the sparse light. He picks a few apples from one of the trees and puts them into the sack he’d brought for this very purpose, and bends to pick up some late season apricots from the grass. He strides further into the orchard and finds pear trees, so he takes a couple of pears too, squeezing at the flesh to find a couple that are softer than the others, and then makes his way back to Callum.

He pauses before he re-enters the barn, feeling safe enough to linger a while, taking a large gulp of fresh air and finding some enjoyment in the cool breeze that caresses his face. Beyond the archway he sees the light go out in the downstairs window of the farmhouse, and guesses that the woman will be letting the dog out one last time before bed, so he quickly pulls open the door to the barn and slips inside.

“Come on Callum, you’ve got to eat somethin’.” Ben wipes sweat from his own forehead and shifts position, trying not to let the juice from the apricot he’s cut up drip onto the sacks Callum is lying on. As he holds the pieces in his palm, the juice streaks through his fingers, smelling sweet and rich. The apricots he’d picked from the orchard yesterday are past their best, soft and fleshy and a little bruised in places, but probably the best thing for Callum to eat right now. They had practically fallen apart as Ben had stuck the pen-knife into them.

He’d coaxed Callum to sit up, but the older man had flopped back down onto his makeshift pillow almost immediately, seemingly too weak to do anything else. The air is becoming ever-closer, the temperature rising, and Ben is certain there will be another thunder storm before the afternoon is out. His patience is stretched near to breaking point, and he bites back an irritable curse. “Callum. Open yer mouth for me. You’ll like this. Apricot. Lovely and sweet.”

Finally, Callum does as he’s told, and takes the smallest piece of fruit.

“’S like feedin’ a baby,” says Ben with a sigh. “You gotta eat or ya won’t get yer strength back, Callum.”

“Not hungry,” whispers Callum around the piece of fruit in his mouth.

“Don’t matter. Yer gonna eat this apricot.” Ben holds out another piece and Callum swallows the piece in his mouth before taking it from between his fingers. “Good lad. Few more pieces. The juice’ll do ya good too.”

Eventually, Callum takes every piece of the fruit, and Ben’s left with the stone and a hand that’s sticky with drying juice. He licks most of it off, his mouth watering at the taste, and then wipes it on one of the hessian sacks, before jumping up onto the hay bale to look out of the opening in the wall. “S’ gonna thunder again. I ought to go out to get more food when it does. Not gonna be discovered then, am I? No one sensible would be out in it.”

Callum hums in answer, and throws his blanket off again.

“Nah, nah, keep it on ya,” says Ben, crossing back to his side. “You’ll never sweat this fever out if ya don’t.”

“Sorry,” says Callum through teeth gritted against the shivers. “I’m holdin’ ya back. You should go on without me.”

“What, and say goodbye to me right-hand man?” asks Ben, all irritation forgotten. “Don’t be daft. Nah, we’ll stay until yer better. Can’t be much longer.”

The storm breaks just as dusk is falling. Ben tears holes in the seams of a couple of sacks and uses them to cover his uniform. They probably won’t keep it very dry but they might help a little. He creeps out of the barn once more and heads for the orchard. Rain falls in vertical sheets and he cowers at the first sound of thunder. He almost returns to the barn, thinking Callum will be panicking at the loud rumble, but thinks better of it. No one will hear him if he cries out, and Ben needs to get more food for them. He can be back in a tick.

He crouches to pick up more fallen apricots, and the sky is split in two by an almighty flash of lightning that takes him by surprise. He drops the apricots and grabs his head in his hands. His breath starts coming in shallow gasps, and he feels his entire body freezing. His muscles feel like they’ve turned to stone.

Another crack of thunder, directly overhead, and he’s immediately back on the battlefield, in amongst the acrid smoke and the deafening gunfire and the falling bodies all around. He sobs, and tries to run back to the refuge of the barn, but his legs won’t work. He manages to stagger over to a nearby apple tree and holds himself up by digging his fingers into the bark, and sobs again, his sob turning into a wail as thunder cracks overhead again.

And then he feels something digging into his back, just above his kidneys. A voice comes from behind him. “Stop! Turn, slowly!”  
He can’t. His legs are shaking, and if he doesn’t continue to cling on to the tree he’s certain he will fall. He braces himself for the sound of a gunshot, and blinks rainwater out of his eyes.

Chapter 5

Zillebeke

The pressure of the rifle in his back disappears, and he sees a figure come into his peripheral vision. He glances up in panic. It’s the woman. She stares at him in consternation as he pants loudly, still clinging to the trunk of the apple tree. “Please,” he gasps. “Please.” He’s not sure what he’s asking. Please don’t shoot me, or please help me?

She’s still pointing the shotgun at him, but she takes a step back and hushes him. “Shh… shh. Oe noeme hy?” She sees from his face that he doesn’t understand her, and says it again. “Oe noeme hy? What is your name?”

He flinches as another flash of lightning splits the sky. She points at herself. “Francesca,” and then points at him again with the hand that isn’t holding the gun.

“Ben,” he gasps. “I’m Ben.” He draws himself upright with a struggle and she takes another step back, holding the gun tighter. Ben raises his hands, his legs still shaking. “English. Please, I ain’t gonna do you no harm.” He realises the idiocy of that statement as soon as it leaves his lips. With the condition he’s in at the moment, she could overpower him in a blink.

Her forehead furrows as she tries to decipher what he’s saying. He can’t stay upright, his legs feel so weak, so he slides down the apple tree until he’s sitting on his haunches, and hides his face in his palms until his breathing slows again. The rain slices the air around them and bounces back up off the ground. He watches it spoil the apricots he’d dropped and feels a hand on his shoulder. He looks up at her. She jerks her head in the direction of the barn, and puts her hand under his elbow to help him get up, then together they stumble back to the door of the barn. She keeps the shotgun trained on him as she opens it.

Once inside, they both shake rainwater out of their hair and Ben wipes a hand over his face, feeling foolish now for his hysterical reaction to the storm.

“What are you doing here?” asks the woman in a heavily-accented voice. She’s a few years older than Ben had supposed; her pigtails giving her the air of a girl no more than twenty, at most.  
Instead, he guesses she’s around his own age, perhaps even a couple of years older. She waves the shotgun in his direction again when he doesn’t answer. “Private! This is private. You have no right here.”

He raises his hands again. “Sorry! I got separated from me battalion. I don’t have no idea where I am.” He’s careful only to talk about himself. If she decides she’s going to hand him in to the authorities, at least Callum might be spared to get away on his own.

The woman looks him up and down. “You are English, non?” “Yeah. English. I’m on yer side, honest.”

Ben suddenly realises he’s still wearing the sacks he’d donned as protection against the rain. He takes them off slowly to reveal his uniform, and then curses to himself as he hears Callum calling from the other end of the barn.

“Ben? What’s goin’ on down there? Ben?”

The woman immediately goes on the offensive again, raising the shotgun and darting hurried glances in the direction of Callum’s voice. “You are how many?”

“Two, just the two of us,” says Ben. “Me mate, he got injured and then come down with a fever.” She frowns, not understanding his vernacular.

“’S my friend. Injured,” says Ben, acting out his words. “And then ill. A fever.”

She’s still looking distrustful, but she waves him ahead of her with the shotgun. “Show me.” He leads the way up the ladder and onto the platform, and she follows a safe distance behind.  
Callum has thrown his blanket off again, but he’s sitting up, which is progress, although he looks light-headed and weak. “What’s - ” his words tail off as he sees the woman ascending the ladder behind Ben. He casts an uncertain look at Ben and then back to her.

“This is Callum,” says Ben. “Callum,” he waves his hand at the woman and then realises he’s forgotten her name in his panic of earlier.

“Francesca,” she supplies, approaching Callum warily. Ben steps closer and she whirls around, pointing the gun at him again. “Stand over there.”

Ben does as she bids, standing over near the wall under the opening that he’d watched her from in the last couple of days. She carefully places the gun on the floor, so that she’s between it and him, and Ben realises she’s testing him. He spreads his hands in a placatory gesture and sits on the hay bale while she crouches beside Callum. She reaches out a hand and places it on his forehead, and looks round at Ben in dismay. “Is very ill, non?”

“Injured, too,” says Callum.

She stands back up. “Show me.”

He lies back on the bed, too weak to continue sitting up, and indicates the tear in his trousers. She peers at it from where she’s crouching, but obviously can’t see very much.

“Let me,” says Ben, standing up slowly, his hands still spread. When she doesn’t argue, he approaches slowly and kneels at Callum’s side. Gently, he pulls apart the fabric to give her a better view, and whistles slowly as he sees that the wound has become infected. “Did ya know it had got this bad?” he asks Callum.

Callum shakes his head briefly with his eyes closed.

“Ya shoulda told me, Callum,” says Ben, exasperated with him. Callum opens his eyes and gives him a look he can’t decipher.

“So,” says Francesca, “you wait here, non?” She picks up the shotgun again and turns back to the ladder.

“Wait! You ain’t gonna turn us in, are ya?” asks Ben.

She points at Callum and makes a face that could mean any number of things and then descends the ladder and crosses to the door. They hear the storm momentarily become louder as she opens the door and wrestles to close it again behind her, leaving them to stare at each other in the gloom.

“Go,” says Callum. “Before she gets back. Leave me, I’ll be alright.”

“I ain’t leavin’ ya,” says Ben. “You told me you don’t wanna go back to war, and I ain’t gonna let that happen.” He crosses to sit beside Callum. “I’ll fight ‘em if I have to.”

Finally, a look he can decipher. Unless he’s got it very wrong, Callum is gazing up at him with what Ben thinks looks close to adoration. He tells himself not to be foolish, and busies himself with rearranging the blanket around the older man.

“Thank you,” says Callum, laying a hand on his arm. Ben can feel its heat even through his tunic. “Whatever happens next, if she comes back with the military or whoever, I want ya to know I appreciate how ya’ve looked after me.”

“Don’t be daft,” says Ben. “I only did what anyone woulda done.” He shifts round to face Callum. “Tell ya the truth, you’ve helped me an’ all, ain’t ya? ‘S hard to feel sorry for yerself if yer lookin’ after someone else.” He refrains from recounting the story of his panic in the storm.

“P’raps we looked after each other then,” says Callum, settling back down and closing his eyes. “An’ if we’re still alive after this is all over, I’ll hold ya to that pint ya promised me.”

Unseen, Ben smiles down at him feeling a fondness he’s never experienced before. He’s never really allowed anyone to get close to him before, emotionally, but it seems Private Highway has inveigled his way in without even trying.

Callum drops off to sleep again, and Ben is left to while away the next half an hour or so fearing the worst, his clothes itching as they dry on him. Outside, the storm is subsiding by the time he sees a lamp advancing across the dark yard, bobbing up and down as the woman – Francesca – traverses the uneven ground. A couple of minutes later, the circle of light the lamp throws is spreading steadily across the floor of their hiding place as Francesca ascends the ladder. She’s laden down with a basket as well as the lamp, and Ben crosses to take it from her as she steps onto the platform. He notices this time she doesn’t have the shotgun with her.

He waits for her to tell him the military are on their way to pick him and Callum up as deserters, but she doesn’t say a word as she crosses to kneel at Callum’s side and gestures for Ben to place the basket beside her. Once he’s done as she commanded, she begins taking an assortment of items from it. Ben sits beside Callum again and gently shakes him awake as Francesca takes out a bowl and a spoon and begins pouring a broth from an insulated container. She waits for Callum to wake and hands it to him.

“I’ll feed him,” says Ben, knowing that Callum isn’t strong enough to do it himself.

Francesca looks at him curiously, but shrugs and hands the bowl to him, then begins pulling back the material around Callum’s wound, her nose wrinkling as she uncovers it. As Ben coaxes Callum to sit up and take a few mouthfuls of the broth, she begins administering a poultice. “He may have had a cold,” she says, sounding like a schoolmarm, “but this is what is causing the fever. You boys did not think to look?”

Ben shrugs, feeling thoroughly reprimanded.

She mutters something underneath her breath that Ben suspects is not complimentary, and bends over her work. By the time Callum’s finished most of the broth, she’s completing her ministrations. She sits back on her heels with an appraising look at her handiwork. “Ca suffice.” She nods her head and turns to Ben. “You are hungry?”

“Yeah, famished.”

She rummages in her basket again and brings out a plate covered with a cloth, on which is an array of preserved meats, pickles and something between a biscuit and a piece of bread. Another rummage reveals a pitcher of lemonade. Ben’s eyes grow wide at the sight of so much abundance, and he falls to clearing the plate as quickly as he can.

Francesca watches him with a faint look of distaste on her face. “You were certainly hungry, non?” She stands up, rubbing her hands together, and then places the insulated container on the floor next to Callum’s bed. “Wake him through the night and make him take the rest of this. Some of the lemonade, too.”

“I will,” says Ben through a mouthful of food. “Thank you. You’ve no idea how grateful we are.”

She nods once, looking as if she half-understands, and then gathers up her basket and lamp and descends the ladder without another word.

They sit in silence as she crosses the floor below and the door opens and then closes behind her. “Ben,” murmurs Callum, still half-asleep with his eyes closed.

“Mm?”

“Last night I woke up and I couldn’t hear yer breathin’. I panicked a bit.” Callum opens an eye. “Can I ask ya somethin’? Don’t think less of me.”

“Anythin’,” says Ben.

“Will ya push yer bed next to mine so I can feel ya close? I get scared.”

Anything but that. But how can Ben refuse? He pushes the sacks that make up his own bed next to Callum’s and sits down reluctantly. His stomach is feeling uncomfortably full after his unexpected feast, and he realises he should have eaten more slowly after so many days of little or no food.

“You feelin’ better after that broth?” he asks Callum, but there’s no reply. He peers round at him. The older man has fallen back to sleep again. Ben sighs, and tries to relax a while before lying down and succumbing to his own sleep.

He wakes Callum twice in the night to take more of the broth, and after the second helping he also takes a little of the lemonade before they settle back down to sleep. Ben lies awake for a long time listening to the sound of Callum’s breathing. Occasionally, outside, he hears the owl again.

When he awakes the next morning it’s already light and he feels warm and comfortable, probably for the first time since they got here. Callum is sleeping close against his back with his arm around his waist, and Ben dares to lie with his eyes closed, relaxed and content, until he hears the sound of a boot scuffing across the floor and opens his eyes to see Francesca standing near the top of the ladder watching them both with her arms folded tight, her basket on the floor at her feet. She raises an eyebrow at him and he clears his throat, feeling suddenly awkward, and sits up quickly.

“How is he?” asks Francesca.

“Uh, not sure,” says Ben. “He took the rest of the broth last night.” He turns and places a hand on Callum’s forehead. “He still feels hot though.” He refrains from asking the question he’s desperate to know the answer to. Has Francesca notified the authorities about them?

Francesca comes across to sit on the side of the bed and elbows him out of the way, placing her own hand on Callum’s forehead. He begins to stir at her touch. “Hmm, still too hot,” she comments.

She begins pulling things out of her basket again and tends to Callum’s wound, removing the poultice and frowning down at the exposed wound before applying a tincture and then replacing the dressing. As she works she gazes around the barn, sniffing slightly. “This place. Is not a good place to stay.”

“It’s good enough,” says Ben. “It’s served us well.”

She glares at him. “Is not yours to stay in.” After a few seconds in which they stare each other out, she adds, “Is also rats.”

“It’s better than what we had.”

“You were in the battle outside Ypres?” 

“Yes.”

She nods her head, and her face softens slightly. “You will help me lift him?”

Ben’s heart stops. The military authorities must be outside already. She wants him to deliver Callum up to them, and himself too. “No, please - ” Stupidly he thinks that if they don’t leave the barn, the authorities will go away, but a second’s reflection shows him the idiocy of that thought.

“You cannot stay here,” she insists. 

“But we can’t go back! Please!”

She peers closely at him through narrowed eyes. “Go back? To where?” 

“To the fightin’.”

“Not to the fighting,” she says, pointing. “To my home. This man needs rest and a proper bed.”

Outside, the air is cooler after last night’s storm, and a slight mist rises from the still-damp ground as the morning sun begins to warm it. They stumble across the yard, buckling under the dead weight of Callum, whose efforts to climb down the ladder seem to have exhausted him. Ben had followed close behind him, one hand on his collar in case, as seemed likely, Callum had become light-headed and tumbled, but they’d made it out of the barn without incident.

Once through the stone arch, the farmhouse is tantalisingly close, but Callum stops short, breathing heavily. “Can’t. Need to rest.”

“Alright,” says Ben. “We’ll rest. Nearly there, Callum.”

They prop him up against the side of the well and Ben and Francesca exchange glances. “Thank you for helping us,” says Ben.

She shrugs. Ben’s not entirely sure she likes him. She seems almost angry with him, for some reason, and he feels like they’re inconveniencing her. “Soon as he’s better,” he says, tilting his chin in Callum’s direction, “We’ll be outta yer hair.” He nudges Callum, demanding his compliance in his next lie. “Gotta get back to our battalion, ain’t we?”

Callum nods tiredly.

“Soon as yer better,” repeats Ben.

They set off again, their progress hampered by the fact that Francesca is shorter than Ben, so Callum’s walk is unsteady. He leans heavily on Ben, presumably to spare Francesca, and his breath comes in wheezing gasps.

When they’re both deposited in armchairs in the parlour of the farmhouse while Francesca makes up beds for them, Ben realises it’s been nearly a year since he’s actually been in a house. He feels clumsy and dirty sitting there amongst the ornaments and antimacassars, too big and rough for the comfortable armchair he’s sitting in.

He gazes at Callum, sitting across from him in a similar chair on the other side of the fireplace. “How ya feelin’?”

“I do feel like I’m gettin’ better,” says Callum, looking half-dead. “Think I’ve got the beatin’ of this darned fever, at any rate.”

“You shoulda told me yer wound was playin’ up,” says Ben, feeling almost offended that it had been left to Francesca to make the discovery about what was ailing Callum.

Before Callum can reply they hear Francesca coming back downstairs, and both try to sit up straighter.

“Come,” she says to Callum when she enters the room. She turns to Ben. “You will need to help.”

They support Callum to climb the stairs and Francesca guides him along a plain corridor and into a bedroom on the right. Inside, a thick cover has been pulled back on a high metal-framed bed furnished with plump pillows, and Callum’s eyes widen as he sees it. “Blimey! I’ve landed on me feet here!”

“Yes, and now you must get off your feet and lie down,” says Francesca, surprising them both with a flash of humour. “First, you must get out of those clothes.” Her nose wrinkles as she indicates his filthy drabs. “I leave you.” She looks at Ben before she turns to leave. “You, help him.”

Ben is beginning to think Francesca is a force to be reckoned with. He’s a sneaking suspicion he might be a little bit scared of her. He turns to Callum and begins helping him to undress. When Callum is down to his drawers and vest he lies back on the bed, moaning. “Oh my giddy aunt, this is bliss!”

“Won’t take ya long to get better here, will it?” asks Ben, pulling the covers over him and smiling at his pleasure. “Then we can be on our way again.”

“Nah,” says Callum. “I ain’t never leavin’ this bed. You’ll havta go on without me.”

He smiles, but even as he does so Ben can see that he’s broken out in a sweat again at all his exertion. His face is pale and he’s trembling slightly. “I’ll leave ya to rest,” he says. “I’ll come back later.”

Francesca is waiting outside the door. She leads Ben further along the corridor to another room, this one with an equally comfortable-looking bed and a window that looks out onto the farmyard. A wash basin and jug sit on the dressing table, and she indicates it with a jut of her chin. “You may clean yourself. I must do the work of the farm.”

“We’re so grateful,” says Ben. “Yer very kind.”

“You are fit?” she asks.

“Well, apart from me ear,” says Ben, indicating his right ear. “I lost all hearin’.” 

She nods. “You may rest today but tomorrow you pay for your board.”

When Ben looks confused, fearing he’s going to have to tell her they have no money, she rolls her eyes. “You help with the work of the farm.”

“Oh! Of course. Anythin’.”

She turns to leave, and Ben hears her footsteps receding back along the corridor and down the stairs. When she’s gone the room is silent, apart from the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece above the small fireplace. He crosses to the window to look out and breathes a contented sigh. In the middle of the farmyard is a knarled magnolia tree, fully in bloom. Beneath it, the blue collie snuffles at the ground, following its nose this way and that. A few scrappy chickens scratch around in the dirt at the far side. Ben watches as Francesca emerges from the house and calls the dog with a short, harsh call, and they make their separate ways through the stone arch.

He strips down to his drawers and vest and gives himself a good wash with the water from the basin, and then settles down to sleep for a few minutes.

When he awakes, he sees from the clock that it’s past one o’clock. He lies a while, luxuriating in the comfort of the soft mattress, and then dresses and wanders along the corridor to see if Callum’s awake. The older man is still fast asleep, his lashes dark smudges on his cheeks, and Ben doesn’t have the heart to wake him, so he continues downstairs and wanders around the house, peering into rooms and looking at photographs on walls.

Francesca is a mystery to him. He guesses the menfolk in her family have been called away to fight, but she seems to be running the farm single-handedly. He can’t begin to imagine the reserves of strength and fortitude it must take to maintain the entire enterprise on her own.

He searches out their much-reduced provisions where they had been left in the parlour and takes out the cigarettes and matches, and then takes a chair from the kitchen and sits outside the kitchen door, smoking and soaking up the afternoon sun.

He’s dozing when a shadow falls across him. He opens his eyes to see that Francesca has returned. She frowns at him again. Ben is beginning to suspect this is her customary reaction to him.

“We need to find you different clothes,” she says by way of greeting. “Your uniform, it has seen better days, non?”

“Well, yes,” says Ben.

“Come.” She beckons to him to follow her back upstairs and leads the way to another bedroom, where she pulls open a wardrobe and sorts through some garments until she finds a pair of trousers and a shirt. “You are about the size of my brother, I think.” She thrusts the clothes at him.

“Thank you,” he says. “Is… is he away fighting?”

“He is.” Her face is carefully blank. “And my father.”

“I’m sorry,” says Ben. “You must resent us, being out of the way of it all.”

She frowns, and he tries to think of an easier way of explaining his thought. “It must be hard, having us here, not fighting, when your loved ones are still out there.”

She shrugs. “I would hope someone would help them as I am helping you, if they were in trouble.” Her face falls to naked sadness, but she clears her throat and adopts the carefully blank look again. She indicates the garments in his hand. “Get changed.”

She leaves the room, and Ben resists the urge to ask her retreating back if she was as bossy to her father and brother as she is to him.

He hears voices coming from Callum’s room once he’s changed, and peers around the door as he rolls up his shirt sleeves. He’s pleased to see that Callum’s awake and looking much brighter. He whistles as he sees Ben. “Look at you! Very smart. Frankie was just tellin’ me she’d given you some new togs to wear.”

Ben looks at Francesca. “Frankie?”

Both Callum and Francesca shrug in unison. They’re bright-eyed, like they’ve been caught out in some mischief, and Ben can’t help feeling left out. He forces a smile and goes back downstairs to smoke another cigarette outside the kitchen door.

Ten minutes later he’s roused by Francesca’s voice behind him. “So, what will you do when he is better?”

He peers round at her sullenly, and she steps outside the door and leans against the wall next to him. “Go back to our battalion,” he says.

She gives him a disbelieving look. “What will you really do?”

He opens his mouth to repeat the lie, but finds he can’t. He looks away across the yard, to where the dog is once again snuffling around underneath the magnolia tree.

“You intend not to take part in the war?”

He shakes his head. “He’s scared. Terrified.” 

“And you are not?”

“I know what you must think of us, Francesca.”

“Your friend has decided I am ‘Frankie’.” She gives him a half-smile. “He is charming, non?”

“Apparently so.” He hears the bitterness in his own voice, and clears his throat, awkward. He doesn’t know why it’s put him out of sorts, seeing Callum and ‘Frankie’ getting on so well. “Listen, Frankie, I know it makes us cowards, but - ”

“If everyone refused to fight, what would happen then?” she asks. She has that same blank look on her face as when she was talking about her father and brother.

“What’s it goin’ to solve? Killin’ thousands of men?”

She scuffs the ground with the toe of her boot. “I don’t know. I suppose it prevents them from killing thousands of our men.” She levels her gaze and fixes him with a challenging stare.

“Look, if yer gonna tell the authorities about us, then so be it,” says Ben. I can’t stop ya, can I?” 

“I have another plan,” says Frankie. “This farm, is too much for me on my own. I give you board and lodging in return for your help. If you are serious about not fighting.”

“We are,” says Ben. “If he thought he had to go back, he’d do somethin’ stupid beforehand.” 

“And you could not live with that.”

“Of course not!” He averts his gaze. He feels like she sees right through him. “We ain’t goin’ back.”

“There will be rules,” she says. “You must not let anyone see you. If anyone calls, you both hide. You don’t go into the far fields where you might be seen. I could be in trouble too if I am harbouring you.”

“I understand. We’ll take care, and you won’t regret it.”

She stares at him a few more seconds, as if weighing up his trustworthiness, and then nods. “Get your uniforms, we will burn them.”

Chapter 6

Zillebeke 1917-1918

Callum recovers slowly, still weak for another few days after the fever has died down, but Ben’s glad to see him back to his ebullient self, even if that ebullience does seem to be directed at Frankie more than him these days. The two of them hit it off immediately, and Callum seems to be able to bring out Frankie’s light-hearted side, as opposed to the grim earnestness with which she treats Ben.

It’s almost impossible to reconcile the horrors they’ve been through with the idyll they seem to be living in now. As they move into autumn, Ben’s days are taken up with tasks around the farm – fixing fences; cleaning out the hen-house, digging and sowing and maintaining – and in the evenings he sits contentedly in the parlour, his muscles humming from exertion, and engages in idle conversation with Callum and Frankie, as Frankie darns and sews and knits and teaches them rudimentary Flemish.

He can feel his mind and body recovering from the horrors they’ve been through, but that doesn’t stop the night terrors that still visit him from time to time. On one occasion, he awakes from a nightmare in which his body is being slowly crushed by the weight of earth upon him to find that Callum is lying beside him on top of the covers. He’s brushing a hand over his forehead and whispering to him to hush.

“’S just a nightmare, Ben. Shh. ‘S OK, I’m here with ya.” He smiles when he sees that Ben’s awake. “You alright? You was havin’ a nightmare, shoutin’ out in yer sleep. Seems like it’s your turn now.”

He continues stroking Ben’s forehead until Ben has to push his hand away. As his panicked breathing slows, he admits to himself that he has a problem. An affliction. He’ll just have to continue his regime of exercise, hard work and fresh air and hope that this torment leaves him. He’d wanted nothing more than to roll over into Callum’s arms, and he can’t bear the thought that he’d lose Callum’s friendship for good if the older man knew the truth about his feelings.

No, he can never tell. Besides which, he clings to the hope that his fevered imaginings are a result of the terror he’s lived through. Perhaps it’s his brain’s way of giving him a distraction, although he can’t help wishing it had provided him with something a little less concerning. Nevertheless, he has every hope that his perverted thoughts will disappear as he recovers from recent experiences.

It seems to be taking a time though. Sometimes he’ll sit in the parlour in the evening and look from Callum to Frankie and try to determine why it is that he hangs on every word from Callum, feels brighter at the merest glimpse of his smile, and yet feels nothing for Frankie. Occasionally, while he’s trying to solve the conundrum in his head, he’ll see Callum regarding him with a faint frown on his face. It clears as soon as he spots Ben looking at him, but it’s there, nevertheless. Other times, Ben will notice the growing warmth between his two companions and retire to bed in a sour mood that he just can’t shake off, no matter how wrong he knows it to be.

Callum has started a habit that bemuses Ben still further. Ever since he’d awoken him from his nightmare, he’d started lightly brushing the back of Ben’s neck with his hand when he entered a room or reunited with him after time apart. It’s an absent-minded gesture of greeting, but Ben notices Frankie watch it happen on more than one occasion. He wonders what she must think of them, this odd, mismatched non-couple who have invaded her life.

Once Callum has regained his strength, Ben gets him to himself on the days when they head off across the fields to tend to a damaged fence or to thin out the reeds in the stream, and those are the days he returns to the farmhouse feeling most happy and content. As autumn drifts into a frosty winter, and more often than not the fields are coated in white for most of the day, they attend to the tasks Frankie sets them with simple good humour, engaging in stories about their lives back home, or light-hearted repartee.

Only once are they nearly discovered. They watch from behind the barn as a woman arrives in the yard on a bicycle. She is portly and dressed in a thick flowing coat that gives the impression she’s floated in on just a pair of wheels. They hear her calling for Frankie in a loud, high-pitched voice, causing the collie to bark ferociously in answer.

It’s washing day, and Frankie has been busy with the mangle all morning. Now she is hanging out the clothes on the line that stretches across the yard. They hang limp in the dry, cold air, with little prospect of drying any further.

Callum catches Ben’s arm and points in alarm. Upon the line, among Frankie’s garments, are the borrowed trousers, shirts and socks that they’ve taken to wearing. They watch with bated breath as Frankie has a long conversation with the woman, before walking her to the yard entrance and waving her off.

“She is the wife of the mayor in the next town. I told her I like to wash my father and brother’s clothes to keep them fresh,” Frankie tells them that evening as they sit in the parlour. “I told her it makes them feel close to me.”

“And d’ya think she believed ya?” asks Ben.

“I think she felt pity for me, so perhaps,” says Frankie. “We must be careful though. Perhaps you should not go so far afield in your work for now. Work indoors, or in the barn.”

So, for the next few days they set about cleaning and tidying the barn from top to bottom.

“How our lives have changed,” says Ben, staring down at the makeshift beds they’d lain on when Callum was ill. 

“Certainly have,” says Callum, coming up behind him and resting on the broom he’s been using to pull down the cobwebs.

“What d’ya think you’ll do when the war’s over?” asks Ben. 

“Head home, soon as I can,” says Callum.

Ben turns his head and watches him closely. “You don’t wanna stay for Frankie?”

“For Frankie?” Callum gives a confused little laugh. “She’ll probably be pleased to see the back of us. Nah, I’ll head home. Won’t you?”

“Not sure,” says Ben. “Not sure if I’ll be welcome. I am a deserter, after all.”

Callum shakes his head. “I wish ya wouldn’t use that word. I can live quite happily with what we are if we don’t put a name to it.”

“It’s what they’ll call us though,” says Ben, bending to pick up the sacks from his bed and starting to empty them out next to the pile of hay bales.

“They might not. They’ll think we was missin’ presumed dead. What a surprise it’ll be for ‘em when we reappear!”

“And how will you explain what we did between going missing and reappearing?”

Callum crosses to the far corner and begins prodding at the cobwebs there. “I dunno. It won’t matter though, will it? I’ll just be happy to be with me family, and they’ll be happy to see me. Don’tcha feel the same?”

“Me family…” says Ben, choosing his words carefully. “Me family ain’t really a happy family. Not like yours.”

Callum glances round at him, and then comes back to sit on his own bed. He sighs. “Nah, mine aren’t really. Me dad…” He abandons his sentence and changes tack. “’S family though, ain’t it? Even if it ain’t the best, it’s still all ya got.”

Ben longs to tell him that he doesn’t have to limit himself, that he has other choices, but that would mean giving himself away. Instead, he carries on dismantling the bed and whistles a tune to himself. A tune that’s more cheerful than his mood.

He can feel Callum watching him. Then he stands up and brushes his hand over the back of Ben’s neck. “I’m sorry. ‘Bout yer family.”

Ben stills, his head bowed, and the next thing he knows, Callum has drawn him into a hug. He tenses.

“You’ve bin so brave throughout all this,” whispers Callum. “I forget sometimes, yer still just a young man. I am here for ya, Ben, if ya ever need comfort.”

Ben’s heart feels like it stops for a second, then he permits himself to fold into Callum, sliding his arms around his waist and tucking his face into his neck.

“You looked after me when I needed it. I can do the same for you.”

Ben smiles wryly, unseen by Callum. He very much doubts if Callum can provide the comfort he so desperately wants. “It don’t matter,” he murmurs into Callum’s neck. “I can look after meself. I tell meself I’m strong then there ain’t no room for weakness, is there? We all tell ourselves stories to get through, don’t we? If we all went round telling it like it really is, where would we be, eh?” He pulls back, somewhat shaky, and looks up at Callum then echoes his words. “Puttin’ a name to it. That ain’t always helpful, is it?”

He goes back to his work and tries to ignore the concerned look Callum is giving him.

The days are getting colder and the nights darker, and soon Christmas will be upon them. Frankie decrees that this year they will have a formal Christmas meal, as it’s not something she’s bothered to do in the last couple of years with her menfolk away fighting, and she spends her days pickling and preserving and curing, and cleaning the house from top to bottom.

She takes Ben with her to try and bag a few pigeon or a couple of rabbits, and he realises he was right to be scared of her. She is a ferocious shot with the shotgun and doesn’t baulk at killing anything that moves and looks like it might be edible.

“What will you give Callum for Christmas?” she asks as they’re lying on hessian sacks in a field alongside the stream, keeping a close eye out for rabbit, or hare.

Ben hadn’t even considered that he would be expected to give presents. “Oh…” he says, surprised. “I dunno.”

Frankie gives him a look of disappointment.

“Yes I do!” he says defiantly. “But I need yer help. He said once that he loves candied oranges, but I don’t know how to make ‘em. Can ya show me?”

“Oranges are very hard to find at the moment,” says Frankie. “But, I will see if there are any at market when I go next week. If you clean out the hen-house every day until Christmas.”

“Blimey ya drive a hard bargain,” says Ben. 

“Of course,” says Frankie.

Ben is beginning to understand her sense of humour, and he thinks they’re learning how to rub along with each other. They’ll never be as friendly as she is with Callum, but Callum is so much more open than Ben. Ben understands it. In fact, he suspects he and Frankie are far too similar to ever be totally at ease with each other.

Frankie peers along the sight of the shotgun where it’s trained on a hedgerow a hundred yards from them. “You are in love with him, non?”

If Ben hadn’t already been lying on the ground beside her he would probably have fallen. “No, course not! What a thing to say!” He glances sideways at her but she’s still staring straight ahead. “We’ve just bin through a terribly extreme experience together. It’s made us close. Given us a bond.” He huffs out a laugh. “That’s all. If I was in love with him well… that’d make me a criminal.”

At that, she does look round at him, with wide eyes. “You would be a criminal for loving someone? And yet they send you boys out to kill each other and that is legal?” She shakes her head, then goes back to staring down the sight of the gun. “This does not make sense.”

“Ain’t it illegal here then?”

“Of course not. Love is never wrong. People who are like that… perhaps they do not shout it to the skies, but they are free to love as they want.”

He opens his mouth to reply but there’s a crack in the air as she pulls the trigger and a poor bunny just leaving the hedgerow breathes its last. As Ben cowers from the noise and tries to recover his own breath, he reflects on what a strange world it is, where criminals in one country can live freely in another.

“But you say you are not in love with him, so it doesn’t matter,” adds Frankie. 

“No. Exactly.”

She looks round at him and smiles a private smile. “You boys!” Then she issues a harsh command to the dog, who races over to retrieve the dead rabbit.

Christmas that year is the best one Ben’s ever experienced. They fell a small tree and bring it into the house, then festoon it with garlands and home-made decorations that they all have a hand in creating from newspaper and old pipe cleaners left behind by Frankie’s father, some to more success than others. The house is full of the smells of baking and spices, and on the Christmas Eve they exchange gifts. Newly-knitted pairs of gloves from Frankie for them both, and from Callum for Ben, a carved bird that he’s clearly spent hours and hours whittling and sanding and smoothing. It’s just small enough to fit in Ben’s pocket, and he runs his fingers over its surface in delight.

“It’s beautiful! I never knew ya could do things like this.”

“Ah, there’s a lot ya don’t know about me,” says Callum, his face pink and his smile wide with pleasure. “I done it when I was still recoverin’ and you was out workin’.”

“Thank you,” says Ben. “I ain’t sure my present matches up to yours.”

He hands over a small box into which he has placed delicate pieces of candied orange. Frankie had managed to exchange one of the rabbits they shot for two small but perfect oranges the week before, the last ones in the whole of the market. Callum opens the box and Ben wishes he could capture the look on his face and keep it forever. His eyes widen and a smile spreads across his features, and he gazes up at Ben in disbelief.

“You remembered!” He peers into the box and takes out a piece, then pops it into his mouth, closing his eyes and moaning ecstatically. “Oh my giddy aunt! I never thought I’d taste this again. This is as good as me mum ever made.”

“You like it then?” asks Ben. 

“I love it! Thank you!”

Frankie looks from one to the other with a smile on her face that’s very similar to the one she wore when she and Ben had gone out shooting rabbit.

On Christmas Day they prepare a meal of trout from the stream that Callum had caught with Frankie’s brother’s fishing equipment, followed by roast pigeon with wild chestnut stuffing, all washed down with apricot brandy that Frankie had somehow concocted from the previous year’s fallen apricots. After dinner they play charades like giddy children, until their faces are pink from laughter and brandy, and the fire in the grate seems too hot for them to sit around, so they take their chairs into the yard and stare up at the stars in the clear, frosty sky, feeding what little leftovers there are to the dog, who paces between them in turn.

Ben feels like he’s finally home. Like he finally has a family that’s worthy of the name. He finds himself wishing the war could go on forever so that this might never end, but then scolds himself for such a thought. It’s just another one to put with his increasing collection of unnatural notions.

“Right,” he says, standing up. “It’s time we started on your Christmas present, Frankie.” He beckons to Callum, and they go back indoors to start washing up the meal things, something they’ve pledged to do for the entire month of January for Frankie, as well as taking her tea in bed every morning.

Callum groans, but does as Ben instructs. “Today’s been more or less perfect, ain’t it?” he asks as they wash up.

“It has,” says Ben. “Perfect food, perfect company.”

“Certainly,” says Callum. He stops drying the plate he holds in his hand and fixes Ben with a smile that’s softened with hours of laughter and brandy. Then he steps across and plants a kiss on Ben’s forehead. “Happy Christmas, Ben. Here’s to a happier year ahead.”

If 1918 intends on bringing them happiness, it starts poorly. The Christmas tree has only just been taken down and chopped into firewood when a telegram arrives for Frankie. Ben emerges from the hen-house to see the retreating back of the telegram boy, and the basket of potatoes Frankie had dug for their meal cast to the ground. He steps closer, and doesn’t need to see the black border on the envelope to know. Frankie is standing stock still, her hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes.

“Who?” asks Ben. When she merely stares at him with wide eyes full of horror, he understands. Both.

He crosses to take her in his arms and tries his best to give her comfort. She submits for a minute and then pushes him away. “It’s not that I did not know it would come, this news. I hoped, though…”

It’s the last time she ever mentions it. Life goes back to normal, closing around the gaping wound in her heart to fill it almost completely, apart from the tiny hole in the middle that Ben knows will never heal, if his experience of death is anything to go by.

Callum and Ben are gentle with her for the rest of the month, both taking trouble to complete the heavy or monotonous tasks before she gets to them; preparing food and cleaning and tidying on top of their other work, until eventually, one morning when Ben gets up early, thinking to clear the fireplace in the parlour and set the fire for the evening, he finds she has risen before them and has almost completed the task.

“I need to be busy,” she says. “Too much idle time is too much thinking time.”

January gives way to February, and Ben begins to see signs of spring all around them. Daffodils send up shoots to peer above the ground; in a month more, the blackbird begins greeting every morning and singing farewell to every day with a sweet, piercing evening song. Fields that were grey and fallow all winter begin to grow a covering of green, and by May, the trees in the orchard are covered in blossom.

It’s impossible not to feel glad of heart, but Ben reminds himself frequently that he’s experiencing this contentment at the expense of others. He wonders if Frankie resents them being here, now that her own menfolk are both dead, but she never hints that that might be the case, and as spring gives way to summer, their little menage becomes ever-closer. They are rarely disturbed by the outside world, and they make their own entertainment when each day’s work is done. With the lighter nights and the warmer weather, often they will take a picnic down to the stream, and while away the evening chattering and paddling and sun-bathing, at peace with the world, no matter that the world may not be at peace with itself just yet.

From time to time, Frankie will hear word of the fighting on her occasional trips to the market. There is talk of the enemy being all but vanquished, and a rising hope among the townsfolk that the war may be over before the year’s out. Ben intends to have a conversation with Frankie when they know for certain that it’s over. He won’t be returning to Blighty, and he hopes she will have need of some farm labour for the foreseeable future. This is the first time he’s been happy in his life, and he doesn’t want it to end. However, he tries to forget that one of the primary reasons for his happiness will no longer be with them. He doesn’t want to believe that Callum will really do as he said and return to his family. When Ben’s lying back on the blanket next to the stream, smoking and regarding Callum through eyes half-closed against the glare of the evening sun, he can see that he’s blossomed as much as the trees in the orchard since he’s been here. Ben rarely sees him without a smile on his face these days, and his body has grown tanned and lean from physical labour. The shyness and timidity he displayed when Ben first met him have long disappeared.

And yet, he still seems set on leaving for England as soon as he can.

Ben raises the matter one evening when Frankie has returned early to the farmhouse and it’s just the two of them, lying side by side in the dappled light thrown by the oak trees above. They’re drowsy and relaxed, and the looks between them have grown soft as the evening fades, giving Ben courage in his question. He reaches into his pocket and closes his fingers around the carved bird Callum had given him, which he’s taken to carrying everywhere with him for luck.

“Are you serious about returnin’ home after the war?” 

“Hmm,” murmurs Callum, half-asleep with his eyes closed. 

“But how can you throw all this away?” asks Ben.

Callum turns onto his side and props his head on his hand. “This is… lovely, Ben. But it ain’t real, is it?”

“What d’ya mean?”

“’S like bein’ on holiday, ain’t it? When life gets back to normal, there won’t be nothin’ here for me.”

Ben has reconciled himself to the fact that Callum’s oblivious to his feelings and yet, hearing him state so bluntly that there’s nothing to keep him here cuts Ben to the quick. “What about me?” he asks in a quiet voice.

Callum chuckles, until he sees that Ben is serious. He stares at him closely. “What d’ya mean?” 

“What if I wanted ya to stay? With me?”

A look of confusion spreads over Callum’s face. “I… don’t know what yer askin’ me.” 

Suddenly, Ben is desperate to make him understand. Slowly, cautiously, as if he’s dealing with a wild animal that might take flight at any second, he reaches out a hand and strokes Callum’s cheek.

They’ve touched each other a hundred times before, but Callum must see from the look in his eyes that this time it’s different. Immediately his expression changes to fear and disgust.

He knocks Ben’s hand away and stands up, towering over him and blocking out the sun. “What’s got into ya, Ben? How can ya think - ?” He cuts himself off, and puts his hands on his hips. “Don’t ever try that again, Ben. I don’t know what you was thinkin’, but it’s wrong. You know it’s wrong.”

He turns on his heel and takes flight towards the farmhouse, leaving Ben in abject despair.

He stays there alone beside the stream, tossing the carved bird from hand to hand, until the sun goes down almost completely. Callum has always been so giving, so tactile, as time went on Ben had dared to hope that he might feel the same way about him, but that’s clearly not the case. He thinks Ben is perverted. Ben supposes he’s right to be disgusted by him. And yet, as he sits there, a sentence keeps repeating in his head. Something Callum had said before when they were talking about being deserters: I can live quite happily with what we are if we don’t put a name to it.

Is that what Ben’s done? Scared him away by attempting to give voice to what they have between them? It’s comforting to think so, it implies they could perhaps go back to what they had, how they were, if only Ben avoids raising the issue. But as the shadows lengthen around him and the owl begins hooting on its nightly rounds, Ben realises he’s just fooling himself. The disgust in Callum’s eyes should be all he needs to convince himself that Callum is an innocent and has no more interest in Ben than he would have in the portly wife of the mayor from the next town. He may be fond of Ben, but not fond enough to build a life with him. Ben is fooling himself thinking otherwise. And yet, and yet… In Frankie’s words, It’s not that I did not know it would come, this news. I hoped, though…

Hope. That one resource we all have in endless supply, overflowing our hearts even when our logic tells us the situation is hopeless. Still hope finds a course.

When Ben finally stands and trudges back to the farmhouse in the near-dark, he sees that a lamp still shines in Callum’s room. There’s one, too, in the parlour downstairs. He pops his head around the door before he retires to his room, to find Frankie staring into the dying embers of the fire. She looks up as he peers around the door. “Ca va?”

He shrugs. He’s been lost in his thoughts for so long, sitting beside the stream in the fading light, that he doesn’t trust himself to speak.

“He was odd, when he came in,” she says. “In an odd mood.”

“Yes?”

“Go and speak to him.”

His heart aches. “I can’t, Frankie. That would be the worst thing for him, at the moment.” 

“You have argued?”

He shrugs again. She smiles sadly at him, but doesn’t force the matter, and he raises a hand in a silent goodnight and treads heavily up the stairs. He hesitates outside Callum’s room, but sees from underneath the door that the lamp has been extinguished. He carries on to his own room.

Private Brown visits him that night.

Ben dreams he’s sitting on the end of the bed watching him sleep. When he wakes in his dream, Private Brown is looking at him accusingly. “Nice little number ya’ve got yerself here.”

Dream-Ben sits up. “Jay! You’re alive! An’ in one piece!” 

“You’ve ruined it all though, ain’t ya?”

“No, no! You can join us. I thought we’d lost ya.”

“You’ve ruined it with yer perverted ways. He ain’t gonna have anythin’ to do with ya now, is he? An’ who can blame ‘im?”

Ben sees a small dot of blood appear on Jay’s shirt. “I never realised you was one o’ them. Wouldn’ta let ya anywhere near me if I had.”

The blood is spreading, creeping over Jay’s chest. “Coward. Pervert. Deserter. Pansy.”

The words turn into a chant as the blood spreads further, coursing now from Jay’s chest, running in rivulets down his torso and onto the bedclothes, soaking along them towards Ben. In his dream, Ben tries to tear his eyes away from the sight but he’s transfixed. He can’t move his head. “No!” he screams. “No!”

“Coward. Pervert…” With a crack, Jay’s chest bursts open and he’s as Ben remembers him on the battlefield, ribs visible and a visceral, bloody mess where Ben can see inside his torso. His eyes stare lifelessly at Ben, and Ben cries out.

“Aaaargh!”

“Ben! Ben, yer havin’ a nightmare. Ben. Open yer eyes. Look at me.”

Callum has pulled up the armchair from the corner and is sitting next to Ben’s bed.

For a minute or so after he wakes, Ben is still trapped in his dream. He gazes at him with frightened eyes, his heart racing.

“You had another nightmare, Ben.” The last time this happened, Callum lay beside him and stroked his forehead. Now, he sits nervously in the armchair, his arms folded around himself and his eyes looking anywhere but at Ben.

It’s this that brings Ben back to his senses. “Sorry,” he says, when he trusts himself to speak. “Didn’t mean to wake ya.”

“’S alright,” says Callum, with a throwaway gesture.

They sit in silence for a while as Ben catches his breath, and Callum frowns down at the counterpane. “I uh… I’m sorry. About you.” He glances quickly at Ben and then away again. “I never realised you was suffering with that… affliction. I mean, ya used to hear about men like that back home sometimes. Me dad and me brother used to laugh about ‘em.” He realises what he’s saying, and throws a panicked glance at Ben again. “Sorry! I didn’t mean - ”

“Forget about it,” says Ben, feeling like his heart’s breaking. “It don’t matter. I’m sorry I made ya uncomfortable. It was the last thing I intended.”

“I…uh… I never gave ya any encouragement, did I? To think I might have those feelin’s too?”

Ben thinks back over all the little touches, the smiles meant only for him – as he’d thought – and wants to tell Callum that yes, he had, but looking at the older man, his face creased in misery and worry, he can’t do it. “Nah, course not,” he says instead. “I just got carried away. Yer right, ain’t ya? All this, what we’ve got right now, it ain’t real is it? Once we’re back in Blighty everythin’ll go back to normal. I’ll go back to normal.” He tries for a laugh. “I mean, let’s face it, I ain’t never had these feelin’s before. They must have come about cos of what we’ve bin through.”

He swallows hard, swallowing down the sadness. “Nah, don’t worry Callum. It ain’t real. S’just like the nightmares. Just a symptom.”

Callum is looking relieved. “Yeah, that’s what I told meself, too. Good job when we get home, eh?”

Ben forces a smile. “Yeah.”

Callum stands up and strokes the hair back from Ben’s forehead. “Go back to sleep, Ben. You want me to stop with ya while ya drop off?”

“Nah, I’ll be alright.” 

“Sure?”

Ben nods, and is rewarded with one of Callum’s blinding smiles.

As Callum goes back to his own room, Ben feels hot tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. He brushes them away roughly and takes deep breaths. This affliction has a greater hold on him than he ever realised. He wonders if there’s a remedy. He can’t go to visit a doctor, but perhaps Frankie would know. Perhaps she’d have a potion she could make up for him, if he can only work up the courage to tell her how he really feels.

Things go back – almost - to normal. They pass the summer carrying out the chores they’d carried out one year before, in a reassuring completion of the cycle of nature. By evening, they’re all too tired to do much more than sit in the parlour, or on chairs in the yard, or sometimes – more rarely now – on blankets by the side of the stream, exchanging desultory talk about their days or feasting on gossip that Frankie brings back from the market.

The talk is increasingly of victory. The Hun have been driven back so far it’s only a matter of weeks before they will have to capitulate, and the townsfolk talk, not of ‘if’ but of ‘when’.

Ben dreads hearing that it’s all over, even as he realises the selfishness of that feeling. It’s all a part of him though. He’s unnatural. It stands to reason he wouldn’t think as other upstanding, decent people think.

Callum is excited to think that he might soon be on his way home, but there’s been a change in him. He’s quieter, more introspective. Occasionally Ben will catch him staring at him with a frown on his face. He’s clearly still struggling with his revulsion at what he’d discovered about Ben, and the younger man longs to discuss it with him again, to reassure him that he needn’t worry; Ben will keep his perverted feelings to himself. He can’t raise the issue though. They’ve achieved an uncertain equilibrium again, and he has no wish to destroy it.

The news comes on a Tuesday when the nights are again darker and they wake every day to hoar frost on the sides of the well; their breath freezing in the air as they criss-cross the yard on their chores.

Frankie has been conversing with the crippled rag and bone man at the entrance to the yard. As he departs, his old doddering nag taking an age to pick up a slow walking pace with the cart rolling behind her, Frankie comes running across the yard to the orchard where they’re fixing splints to a couple of the trees that had been damaged in a storm two nights before. “It’s finished! It’s finished! They signed an armistice yesterday!”

They stare at one another in disbelief as she wheels around the gate and into the orchard, the dog racing alongside her barking and thinking itself part of a big game. “The war! It is over!”

She flings herself at Callum and gives him a big hug, and then does the same with Ben.

He stares at Callum over her head, seeing the look of joy on his face, and his heart breaks. “So, this is it,” he says as Frankie steps back. “All change.”

“What will you do?” she asks, breathless and filled with laughter.

“Go home,” says Callum. “We’re goin’ home!” He raises his arms in a sign of victory, and yells to the sky, “We’re goin’ hooooome!”

Ben can’t help but notice Frankie’s laughter has faded and she’s looking as sad as he feels. He wonders what life has in store for her now. No father, no brother. A big old farm to maintain. Now the news has sunk in she’s looking small and vulnerable.

“Unless…” he begins. “If ya still need help with the farm, Frankie, I’d love to stay on. At least til ya decide what yer gonna do.”

She fixes him with a smile. “I would like that very much.”

“What?” Callum is looking confused. “But what about them things ya said?” He gives Ben a meaningful look. “Gettin’ back to normal - you know…”

“Maybe…” says Ben, sick to his heart of pretending any longer, “… maybe I don’t want things to get back to normal.” He stares at Callum defiantly. “Maybe they never will.”

The older man glances from him to Frankie and back again, looking like he wants to say things he can’t or won’t say in front of her. Finally, he settles on, “Well, I’m more sorry for you than you’ll ever know, Ben.”

With that, he turns and strides out of the orchard and away towards the stream.

Frankie looks at Ben, perplexed, and he tries to give her a reassuring smile. “What say we down tools and have a sneaky cup o’ tea? I think this calls for extraordinary measures.”

Nothing changes immediately, except a sadness seems to settle over the farmhouse, all of them conscious that their time together is running out. Everything takes on a melancholy air, and Ben almost feels like he had when he’d gone over the top on the battlefield, constantly braced for the volley that will kill him, except that this time, it won’t be bullets but words. The words he dreads hearing from Callum: I’ve got passage back to England, I’m leaving tomorrow.

“They say in town that there are boats at Dunkirk,” whispers Frankie one evening a week later as Ben helps with the washing-up. “They are loading them with men from the beaches there. It is his best chance of getting home.”

She meets his gaze with her own, and Ben sees his own dread mirrored in her eyes. She doesn’t want their household to be broken up any more than he does. There’s been enough loss already to last them all a lifetime.

He sighs. “You havta tell him. We can’t keep this from him.” 

“But you want - ”

“Nothin’. I don’t want nothin’,” he says, turning away so that she can’t see the pain in his eyes.

They join Callum in the parlour after they’ve completed the washing-up, and all three sit in silence in front of the fire, watching the flames flare every now and again and listening to the damp wood crackle as it catches. Ben wishes he had a camera so that he could capture this moment forever, but it’s not just the picture he wants to keep. It’s the things that can’t be captured except in memory. The smell of the burning wood; the way they’ve become accustomed to sitting in the same places every evening, so that they have their own chairs. Frankie directly in front of the fire, Callum to her right, Ben opposite him. It’s the cosy contentedness that permeates the scene. The way that Ben feels safer and happier here than he ever has in his life. Only now, there’s something else too, an ugly emotion that nips at the corners of this idyllic picture. Ben is angry. At Callum, for breaking up this household; at God, for afflicting him with something that means he can never again have the closeness to Callum that he craves; at the world, for not being made for the likes of him. He stares into the flames and wonders at how life turns on a sixpence. A year ago he was happy. Now he’s bereft.

Frankie clears her throat. “They were saying in the market today.” She exchanges a glance with Ben. “They say there are boats at Dunkirk, waiting to take the men off the beaches, to take them home to England.”

Callum stirs, his eyes hopeful. “Yeah?” He looks from Frankie to Ben. Ben avoids his eyes as Frankie nods wordlessly. “How far is Dunkirk from here?”

“Just over fifty miles,” says Frankie. “Two or three days’ walk.”

“I should set off soon, then,” says Callum. “P’raps if I’m lucky I’ll get a lift on the way.” He sits forward, beginning to plan. “If I set off at first light tomorrow -”

Ben’s head shoots up at that. “So soon?”

“Well, yeah. I don’t wanna get left behind, do I? If I make good time I could be there by the day after if I’m lucky, and back in old Blighty within a week.” Callum’s face is shining with excitement, but his smile fades as he looks across at Ben. He sighs. “I wish ya’d come with me, Ben.”

Ben scrunches his eyes and shakes his head silently.

“What about that pint you always promised me?” asks Callum. “What am I gonna do without me right-hand man?”

“Don’t!” says Ben. The parlour feels too warm all of a sudden, his collar too tight. He stands up and races from the room, taking refuge in his bedroom.

The next morning, Ben is in his shirtsleeves, just wiping his face after shaving in front of the glass in his room, when there’s a knock on the door. It’s him. He’s never knocked on the door before.

He edges into the room as if he thinks Ben’s going to tell him he’s not welcome. “I, uh… I’m off in a minute. Frankie’s sorted me out with directions. And some food. Like I say, I’ll probably catch a lift on the road if I’m lucky.”

Ben nods, unable to think of a single thing to say. He finishes drying his face in his towel and casts it aside.

“I just wanted to say me goodbyes,” continues Callum. “Already said ‘em to Frankie.” He gives Ben a weak smile. “Thought I’d save the most important to last.”

“Yeah?” asks Ben.

“Course! I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you, Ben. I owe you me life.”

Then give it to me, thinks Ben. Give me your life and your smiles and your beautiful nature for as long as we’re both still on this earth. Instead, he opens his arms and says, “Better give us a hug then, before ya disappear.”

Callum steps across to him and they embrace, Ben burying his face in Callum’s neck one last time. “Don’t forget me, will ya?” he asks, his voice catching. He clears his throat. “Just don’t forget me.”

“Course not! Never could,” says Callum. “I shall always remember our time here. Some of the best days of me life.” He steps back and wipes a hand over his eyes, then stares at Ben for the longest time, as if he’s committing his image to memory. “I, uh… I’m sorry.”

“For what?” asks Ben.

“For not bein’ able to give ya what you wanted from me.”

Ben shakes his head, unsure what he means. “Don’t be daft. You just stay safe, ya hear me? Write to me, if ya want. Write to both of us.”

“I will.” Callum nods his head energetically, and wipes his eyes again. “Right, better make a move, hadn’t I?” He takes a step back, but then surges forward again and takes Ben in his arms one more time.

They cling to each other, and eventually it’s Ben who breaks the contact. “Go on with ya. You’ll never get there at this rate.”

Callum sniffs, and nods his head with a watery smile. “Right. Bye Ben. Be happy, won’tcha?” And then he’s gone.

Ben hears him thunder down the stairs, and a few seconds later sees him emerge from the farmhouse and make his way across the yard. He turns at the entrance and waves, then strides away out of view.

“So, this is where you are hiding.”

Ben turns from the window to see Frankie in the doorway of his room some twenty minutes later. She crosses to sit on the side of his bed. “So, he is gone.”

“Looks like it,” says Ben. He leans back against the windowsill, toying with the carved bird in his palm, and stares helplessly at her.

“If it helps,” she says. “I think perhaps he had similar feelings for you. He just didn’t know what to do with them.”

“It don’t,” he says. “It don’t help, and I don’t believe ya. Now, what d’ya want me to do today? I can work me socks off, whatever ya want me to do.”

She stares at him, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, and then nods. “Alright, I can give you lots of work, if that’s what you need.”

“It is. I wanna be so shattered when I get in me bed tonight, I’m out like a light.”

It works. He’s in bed by half past nine and asleep shortly after, helped no doubt by a large glass of some of the leftover apricot brandy Frankie keeps at the back of the pantry. The moon is high in the sky, shining brightly through the open curtains. Ben doesn’t know why he hasn’t drawn them, but he has a nagging feeling that he doesn’t want to be in total darkness that night. He fears that the nightmares are going to come, only this time there will be no one to wake him and provide comfort.

He stirs momentarily as Frankie retires to bed an hour or so later, and then his eyes close again. He’s woken much later by a single gruff bark from the dog downstairs. He lies still in the cold blue light flooding in through the window, and for a second everything is normal, then the heartache comes rushing back as he remembers. He’s gone. Ben is alone.

The third step from the top creaks as it always does, and Ben hears a foot fall outside his room. He freezes, holding his breath. Perhaps he’s still asleep and this is another nightmare. His brain has settled upon a new way of making him suffer.

A floorboard creaks outside his door, and he sits up in bed, scratching his bare chest. “Who’s there? Frankie?”

He breathes a sigh of relief as the door begins to open. He’s awake. Not in the middle of a nightmare. He opens his mouth to chastise Frankie for creeping around the house at night, and then it falls closed. He’s not so sure he isn’t still dreaming.

“Sorry, I was gonna wait til mornin’,” he whispers, stepping into the room. 

“Callum?”

He closes the door quietly behind him, and stands just inside, staring at Ben with eyes that are beseeching.

“You’re back?” says Ben. “For good?”

“P’raps,” says Callum. “If ya want me to be.” He comes across to sit on the side of the bed, and Ben battles the urge to reach out and touch him, to check that he’s real and not a product of his fevered imagination.

“I walked all mornin’,” says Callum, “and with every step I took, I felt like me heart was breakin’. I told meself not to be stupid, that it’d get better the further away I went, but it didn’t.” He gazes at Ben as if imploring him not to tell him what an idiot he’s been. “I stopped for me lunch, and when I got up to set off again I just couldn’t do it. I could not put one foot in front of the other. Not til I turned around and started headin’ back. Then me footsteps were easier and me heart became lighter with every mile I finished.”

Ben stares at him with bated breath, not daring to hope. Even if Callum just means he’s coming back to be part of their household, it’s enough. He doesn’t need to be there for Ben alone, just as long as he’s going to stay.

“I’m sorry,” continues Callum. “I’m sorry for makin’ ya feel that the cross you bear is yours alone. I should never’ve made ya feel that you were the only one with the affliction, but you’ve always bin the brave one, ain’t ya? Of the two of us, I’m the coward - ”

“Nah,” says Ben, but Callum puts a hand on his arm to quiet him.

“I got to thinkin’, as I was walkin’. They’ve lied about a lot, ain’t they? They lied about war, so who’s to say they ain’t lied about a man lovin’ another man? Didn’t ya say it weren’t illegal in this country?”

Ben nods, his heart almost full to overflowing with happiness at Callum’s words.

“Well, there y’are then. We’ve looked out for each other, cared for each other – saved each other, even, and who’s to say that’s wrong? No one who ain’t bin through what we have can tell us it’s wrong.” Callum smiles, a faraway look in his eyes. “Back home, I had a girl, a sweetheart, I s’pose you’d say, but she never cared for me as you ‘ave. Nowhere near.”

Ben can’t contain himself any longer. He falls forward into Callum’s arms and buries his face in his neck. He’d been so sure he would never do it ever again in his lifetime. He wonders again at how life turns on a sixpence.

They hold each other for the longest time, not needing any more words, until eventually Callum pulls away and stands up. He begins to undress, stopping when he gets to his drawers and vest. His eyes ask a silent question, and he must see the answer in Ben’s eyes, for he strips off the remaining garments, his face pink, and rounds the bed to slip in under the covers. Ben feels like his heart’s about to burst, so loud is his pulse in his ears.

They lie side by side, not touching, both of them too shy and unsure to know what to do next, until Ben rolls over into Callum’s arms and feels them tighten around him. “I don’t know what I’m doin’,” he whispers. “I just know I want this.”

“Me too,” says Callum. “We don’t have to rush anythin’, do we? We can work it all out as we go. Together.”

“You sure about this?” asks Ben. “I mean, never seein’ yer family again…”

Callum is silent for so long, he thinks he must have fallen asleep, although how he could possibly have managed it is beyond Ben. His every muscle feels taut and alive. With Callum naked beside him he doesn’t think he’ll get a wink of sleep ever again. He lies still, dreading Callum’s answer, fearing he’s just reminded him of why he was so keen to get back to England in the first place.

Eventually, Callum clears his throat. “I learned somethin’ while I was here,” he starts. “Maybe it was you that taught me it. You can choose yer family, can’t ya? The best family for ya ain’t always the one you were born into. Not always the one you expect it to be.” He dips his head and peers down at Ben. “Don’tcha think?”

“You ain’t wrong,” says Ben, taking advantage of the angle to reach up and kiss Callum on the lips.

He sees the older man blink in surprise, but he doesn’t push him away, and Ben’s heart races at the unexpected sensations he feels at such a simple action. “We’ll havta tell the other member of our family in the mornin’” he says, settling back down into Callum’s arms again. “She’ll be surprised.” 

“Nah,” says Callum. “I don’t reckon she will.”

They fall asleep together in the light of the moon. Somewhere outside, the owl hoots as it wends its way on its nightly rounds.


End file.
